CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY 



/ 



STUDIES 



CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY: 
HOURS 



aijeologiana ani Eefornuers 



SAMUEL OSGOOD, 

•• • 

MINISTBR OF THE CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH IN NEW YORK. 



^aiftiatis Si ^apianaTcav ctVi, rd Si avTo nvevna' 



NEW YORK; 

C. S. FRANCIS AND CO., 252 BROADWAY. 

boston: 

j. h. francis, 128 washington street. 

1850. 



-^-KlT^O 



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gr^hj Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, 
BY C. S. FRANCIS & CO 
111 the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 






TO 



tHree christian congregations 



^ ®rtbut£ 



EEMEMBRANCE AND GRATITUDE, 



CONTENTS 



^. Augustine and his times 1 

II. Augustine and his works . - - . 35 

III. Chrtsostom and the ancient pulpit - - - 66 

TV. Jerome and his times --.-_- 91 

V. Jerome and his works 123 

VI. John Calvin and the reformed system - - 144 

VII. Teresa and the devotees of spaii^ . - . 168 

"Win. Faustus Socinus and the revival of unitarian 

principles -._.---. 213 

IX. Hugo Grotius and the arminians . - - 233 

X.' George Fox and the English spiritualists - - 277 

XI. SWEDENBORG AND THE MYSTICISM OF SCIENCE - 238 

XII. John Wesley and Methodism _ - _ - 319 

XIII. Jonathan Edwards and the new Calvinism - 348 

XIV. John Howard and prison reform - . . 373 



i 



PREFACE 



The purpose of this volume is very little ambitious, 
and its story is soon told. 

Some years since, the author had reason to believe 
that the study of Christian history was much neg- 
lected, and that he might be of service, especially to 
the young people of his parish, by calling attention 
to the lives and labors of the leaders of Christian 
thought and action. He was thus led to accumulate 
a considerable amount of biographical material, which 
was used from time to time for various occasions, and 
presented now in fire-side conversations and familiar 
addresses, and now in more elaborate lectures and 
reviews. What meets a want in one quarter may do 
the same elsewhere, and at the suggestion of several 
friends this volume is now published. 

It consists chiefly of such studies as have been re- 
vised for previous publication and have appeared in 



X PREFACE. 

Reviews. It seemed best to let the articles stand 
mainly as they were published without undertaking 
to break down their peculiarities into the uniformity 
of style or illustration that would be desirable in a 
more closely connected work. The reader will please 
remember that some of these papers were prepared 
for a popular Magazine, and others for Literary and 
Theological Reviews, whilst a few are little more 
than revisals of lectures addressed to a miscellaneous 
audience. Several of the articles have not been pub- 
lished before. 

In substance, the third article appeared in the 
North American Review — the fourth and fifth in the 
Bibliotheca Sacra — the first, second, seventh, ninth, 
twelfth, and thirteenth, in the Christian Examiner — 
and the remainder, excepting those never before pub- 
lished, in the Monthly Religious Magazine. 

The author would like to have given to all the 
topics here treated the same amount of study and 
care as has been bestowed upon the more elaborate 
papers in the volume. But this would have changed 
the character of the work and interfered with de- 
sirable variety and popular interest, as well as due 
brevity. He has tried to seek the truth and speak it 
candidly. To suppose that he has fallen into no 
error in his estimate of men too friendly or too hostile 



PREFACE. XI 

to his own views to make impartiality easy, might be 
arrogance. 

In conclusion, he would only say, that these and 
the like studies are connected in his mind with many 
of the best friends and happiest associations of his life. 
Personal references are, of course, out of place here, 
and pastoral experiences had better be kept for those 
most nearly concerned in them. Yet it may be of 
use to state, that whilst pursuing those branches of 
study that require the more ample and costly re- 
sources, the writer was much assisted by the success 
of an enterprise which all considerable communities 
would do well to imitate. A fund was raised by the 
contribution of various churches in the city of Provi- 
dence, for purchasing the rare and expensive books 
serviceable to clergymen, and the admirable collec- 
tion of the Christian Fathers, in Brown University, 
remains among the many monuments of public spirit 
that are giving the capital of Rhode Island a con- 
spicuous place in the nation. 

New York, March, 1850. 



I, 

AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES.* 



Bustling and utilitarian as our age is generally 
Cc|.lled, it cannot reasonably be accused of slighting 
the lessons of the past or despising the names of the 
good and great of former times. Indeed, the very 
ardor with which we are urged to join in the bold en- 
terprises and sanguine movements of the day has led 
many to take an opposite turn, and seek in the study 
of antiquity a quiet and a wisdom which they find not 
in the restless tumult around them. They meet with 
more to soothe and edify them in the Greek and Ro- 
man classics or the Christian Fathers, the wisdom 
of Indian sages or Egyptian priests, than in the pages 

* 1. Histoire de Saint Avgustine Sa Vie, Ses CEuvres, Son Siecle, 
Influence de Son Genie. Par M. Poujoulat. Paris, 1845. (History 
of Saint Augustine, his Life, his Works, his Age, the Influence of 
his Genius. By M. Poujoulat.) Three vols. 8vo. 

2. A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Anterior to 
the Division of the East and West. Translated by Members of the 

English Church. Oxford. 1840-45. Vols. I— XX. 8vo. 

3. Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for 
the Times. By the Author of " Spiritual Despotism," Fourth 
edition, with Supplement, Index, and Tables. London. 1844. 
Two vols. 8vo. 

1 



^ AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

of political newspapers or reform magazines, the 
visions of financial schemers or the disputes of secta- 
rian divines. 

While we are receiving from iliQ principal nations 
of Europe every school of new philosophy and every 
project of eocial innovation, w^e are assured from the 
same quarters by other voices, that all philosophy is a 
sin against faith and all innovation is a rebellion 
against authority. France gives us Fourier w^ith his 
promised millennium of industrial association and 
De Maistre with his eulogies of the dark ages and his 
predictions of the return of Papal dominion. From 
Germany the reverent voices of Adam Moehler and 
Frederick Schlegel have entreated us not to listen to 
the war-notes of Frederick Strauss and Henry Heine, 
nor prefer to the ancient Church w^ith its literature of 
faith, modern rationalism w^ith its literature of the 
senses and understanding. England, too, our own 
England, sends forth antagonist influences quite as 
various. Robert Owen comes to teach us his plans of 
Socialism, and Dr. Wiseman writes to win us back to 
the Roman Church. Carlyle calls the Pope a miser- 
able chimera, and Kenelm Digby lauds the Papal 
ages, as the " ages of faith." With one hand our mo- 
ther country gives us railroads, and bids us by her ex- 
ample traverse the ends of the earth ; wnth the other 
she holds out to us the Oxford Tracts, and insists 
upon quietude, fasting aud prayer as the path of peace 
and the way of life. As a people we are ready (o 
welcome every form of foreign influence, and, 
whether moved by imitation or our own dispositions, 
are beginning to exhibit on a large scale the antago- 



STUDY OF THE FATHERS. 6 

nist tendencies of which we have spoken. We are 
carrying" out democratic theories, and giving full scope 
to priestly domination ; we are estabUshing Pourierite 
communities, and building stately cathedrals; we are 
engaged in earnest enterprises of business and reform? 
that agitate the soul, and encouraging music, paint- 
ing, sculpture, gardening, and the arts, that soothe 
the soul. We are erecting fine houses as if we were 
to live forever, and laying out beautiful cemeteries as 
if it were no great ill to die. From some traits of 
our character it would seem as if David Crockett 
with his noted adage embodied our national genius, 
while in other traits we show some kindred with 
Old Mortality and his love of wandering among the 
graves. 

Forward as our march is, we tend now strongly to 
the study of the past. We love to stop in our course, 
visit the tombs of our fathers and build monuments 
to the saints of our own and former ages. Not to 
speak of the number of historical works printed and 
read among us, it is surprising that so many treatises 
upon sacred antiquity have been sent from our presses, 
and that the Christian Fathers are winning so much 
attention at our hands. Whatever may be the cause 
©f this, — whether intellectual curiosity or sectarian 
strife, we cannot say, — it is evident that great ques- 
tions now before our people must lead us to study 
anew the history of the Church, and come to a satis- 
factory conclusion concerning the men and the doc- 
trines of the primitive ages. 

Taking Christendom at large, it is obvious that 
within the last ten or fifteen years the study of the 



4 AUGUSTINE AMD HIS TIMES. 

Christian Fathers has been revived in a remarkable 
manner. Without quite aceepting the pseudo-pro- 
phet Miller's doctrine of a speedy end of the world, 
to be accompanied by a bodily resurrection of the 
saints, we may say that in one sense in our time the 
saints have already been raised ; " the souls of them 
that suffered for the witness of Jesus and the word of 
God " have been seen and appreciated anew. Their 
spirit has been studied, while their works have been 
faithfully exhibited. No longer in their original vol- 
uminous manuscripts, nor in their former cumbrous 
folios, their thoughts now appear with all the aids of 
modern art, the more attractive garb of modern print 
and editing. '[■ Chrysostom and Augustine, subdued as 
was their pride, could not but have rejoiced, had they 
foreseen the honors paid them in this nineteenth cen- 
tury ; and in view of the elegant octavos in which 
Paris and Oxford have enshrined their works, they 
would have bestowed no small benediction upon the 
memory of Dr. Faustus, and have broken the spell 
that has coupled his name with the prince of dark- 
ness. 

1 Of course we are far from thinking that the mass of 
readers among us will soon care much for patristic 
lore. Its results, however, are interesting all persons 
of Christian faith and common intellectual curiosity, 
whilst an earnest band of thinkers and scholars, 
both in the Old World and the New, are turning to 
the pages of the Fathers for oracles of wisdom that 
can, as it seems to them, cure the chief of prevalent 
follies. One reason of the revival of the study is, 
doubtless, to be found in that love for all historical in- 



STUDY OF THE FATHERS. 5 

vestigation which so strongly marks recent Uterature. 
Somewhat suspicious of mere theories of society and 
philosophies of rehgion, we wish to know what has 
actually been done in the former times to carry men 
forward, and are more disposed to value ideas and in- 
stitutions that have worked well than ambitious 
schemes that only promise well. The historic schools 
of Germany, England, and even Prance show a strong 
conservative tendency, and prove that our nineteenth 
century with all its bustling progress is far more rev- 
erently retrospective than the eighteenth, far more 
disposed to unite memory with hope as guides of the 
world. As a result of this historical movement, of 
course the Christian Fathers must come in for their 
share of attention ; and merely philosophical fidelity, 
to say nothing of Christian faith, has moved writers 
of the stamp of Guizot and Michelet to try to appre- 
ciate fairly the men, whose works J^est illustrate that 
great period in which the world passed from Pagan- 
ism to Christianity, and the foundations of our Chris- 
tendom were laid upon the ruins of ancient empires. 
Moreover, the religious aspect of our age favors the 
study of the Fathers. There is in some quarters a 
strong suspicion, that Protestantism has gone too far 
in encouraging freedom of thought and disparaging 
the authority of creeds, traditions and priesthoods. 
Considerable numbers of thinking persons, who are 
reluctant to cast themselves at the feet of the Pope 
and surrender their freedom to the council of Trent, 
are seeking or advocating some middle ground be- 
tween Papal despotism and what they call Protestant 
self-will. The Christian Fathers are held up as 



6 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

Standing" on such middle ground, and we are asked to 
read them, if we would be saved from both the peril- 
ous extremes in the theology of our day, and learn to 
harmonize just liberty of thought with due recognition 
of the Church and its traditions. There is not a little 
of this tendency among the Protestants of Germany, 
although it has been exhibited to us more directly in 
the Oxford Tractarians and various works which they 
havejwritten and edited. At the time when liberal 
principles in religion and government were at their 
height in England, these men conceived the plan and 
undertook the work of leading their country back to 
ancient authority both in Church and State. In the 
midst of the enthusiasm of the Reform Bill and the 
emancipation of Dissenters and Romanists, these 
scholars looked with sadness upon the innovation, 
sought some remedy in the lessons of the past, and 
not stopping wilja the principles of the Reformation, 
in Germany or England, nor willing to countenance 
the usurpations of Rome, they appealed boldly to the 
Christian Fathers, and thus brought on a reaction 
against modern liberalism, that has produced already 
great effect in their own country, and has gained not 
a few followers among us, some among mature and 
cautious minds, many among the young and the ro- 
mantic. It is evident that the chief part of ihe 
recent theological literature of England is strongly 
tinged with the Oxford doctrines. The result has 
been very bitter to the Evangelical party in the 
English Church, as we may surely infer, when so 
wise and good a man as Isaac Taylor, the author of 
the work on Ancient Christianity, the title of which 



TAYLORS ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY. 7 

is given at tlije head of this article, interrupts his pre- 
vious course of authorship, gives himself so entirely 
to this one topic, and seems sometimes in danger of 
losing his temper at the asperity with which he. and 
all kindred champions of what he calls Evangelical 
Christianity, are treated hy those who give tradition 
so important a place by the side of the Bible. His 
work, in connection with the Oxford Library of the 
Fathers, the title of which we iiave also given, will 
enable our readers, who are not ambitious of a more 
laborious study of the Greek and Latin originals, to 
form a good idea of the questions at issue between 
the two parties in the English Church. As Mr. Ta}^- 
lor is an earnest member of the Establishment, we are 
not, by referring to him with favor, quoting any writer 
hostile to that Church. 

His book is probably the ablest treatise on Ancient 
Christianity, or rather the Christianity of the Nicene 
age, that has appeared in our time. Indeed, so far 
as it deals with the Nicene Fathers in the claims set 
up for them as Catholic authority, the work is un- 
surpassed by any that can be named. It is superior 
to the famous work of Daiile, by concentrating its 
light upon the most important point of the subject 
and breaking the authority of the Fathers by assault- 
ing the centre of their position. It differs from the 
more celebrated treatise of Chiliingworth, on the re- 
ligion of Protestants, which was suggested by the 
work of Daiile, in dealing more with facts than ab- 
stractions, by exhibiting tradition as it was in the age 
of its boasted purity, and showing conclusively what 
was the actual doctrine of the Nicene Fathers, and 



8 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES, 

what folly and absurdity must follow from leaving 
the sure rule of Scripture and accepting their author- 
ity. Mr. Taylor deals almost solely with the doc- 
trine of celibacy as held by the Fathers and with the 
development of its consequences. He regards this 
doctrine as the parent of all superstition and fanati- 
cism, morbid feeling, false doctrine and pernicious 
formalism. He finds such fruits of its influence in the 
third and fourth centuries of the Christian era, as 
lead him to regard the mighty hierarchy which was 
subsequently built up by Gregory I., and completed 
by Gregory VH., as a great reform, a salutary check 
upon the error and wickedness already brought into 
being. He makes ample quotations from the Nicene 
Fathers to prove his position, that they generally held 
the doctrine of celibacy as the highest virtue, and 
that their works show that the state of religion 
around them was very low. To us his work is con- 
clusive upon one point, that if the Christian Fathers 
are to be taken as authoritative guides, we must at 
once quit our common Protestant principles, believe 
in the sanctity of celibacy, the worth of relics, the 
magical power of the sacraments, and all of Popery 
except the doctrine of a supremacy of the Pope other- 
wise than as the primacy of honor. Mr. Taylor's 
book is interesting from its unity of purpose. He 
allows the champions of tradition to take their strong- 
est ground among their strongest authorities, and 
then bears down upon the centre of their position 
with the force of a Nelson's attack or a Napoleon's 
charge. Undoubtedly by dwelling so much upon one 
point and with a purpose so hostile to the opposite 



THE OXFORD TRANSLATION. 9 

party, he is in great danger of overlooking t,he true 
worth of the Fathers. 

It is therefore well for those who read his some^ 
what disheartening pages, to take a glance at the 
brighter side of the subject, and learn from the series 
of Translations before us, the Library of the Fathers, 
how much wisdom and piety they contain. What- 
ever may be thought of the Nicene theology, we must 
find much to respect in all these volumes. Of the 
authors here given, Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, 
Cyprian, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Tertullian, Gre- 
gory, Pacian, four or five stand out prominently as 
writers. No reader can deny that Tertullian is full 
of fire, or that Athanasius is mighty in argument, or 
that Chrysostom is eloquent, or Augustine profound. 
We could have wished that Clement and Origen had 
been included in these volumes, and have hope that 
their noble spirit and deep wisdom will give them ar- 
place ere long in the series. Yet we must remember 
that the chief favorites of the translators have not yet 
been represented ; that of the choice three, Ambrose, 
Basil and Chrysostom, only the last has appeared in 
these volumes. Perhaps it is not wholly wrong, to 
desire that with specimens of the best works of the 
Nicene Fathers some of the worst had been also 
given, that we might judge of the age in its folly as 
well as its wisdom, and see what idle legends and 
degrading superstitions the wisest of them cherished, 
what monkish fanaticism Athanasius could eulogize 
and what priestly miracles Augustine could credit. 

We propose to speak especially of one among the 
Christian Fathers in connection with his times, the 
1* 



10 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

one who has exercised a more permanent influence 
than any of them. Aurelius Augiistinus, commonly- 
called St. Augustine, is of course the man. We will 
try to give some idea of the age, the man, and his 
Works. 

He was born in the middle of the fourth century, a 
century more momentous to Christendom than any 
other except that in which Jesus lived, and that in 
which Luther wrote. During this century Christian- 
ity had become the established religion of the Roman 
Empire. Constantine had laid his sceptre upon the 
Christian altar ; Julian had striven in vain to sup- 
plant the faith of the cross by his splendid eclecticism 
of philosophical deism, natural symbolism and vulgar 
Paganism ; and by the labors of a brilliant company 
of orators, prelates, scholars and theologians, the 
Christian doctrines were settled for ages, and ecclesi- 
astical institutions were consohdated. We shall be 
better able to estimate the leading men of this period, 
by a glance at the previous history of the Church. 
The first writers after the death of the Apostles are 
the Apostolical Fathers, whose writings are chiefly 
pastoral and practical, such as the Epistles of Poly- 
carp and Ignatius. Next come the defenders of 
Christianity against Heathen assaults, the Apologists, 
such as Justin Martyr and Tatian. Their works are 
valuable chiefly as showing the common objections to 
Christianity and the prevalent mode of meeting them. 
Gradually as the religion gained progress, and won 
for itself strongholds in various countries and allied 
itself with intellectual culture, it began to show itself 



THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 11 

under various forms with the most marked character- 
istics. Before Constantine took the Gospel under his 
patronage, the Church had shown itself to be the 
most stable power in the Empire, and had combined 
great unity of action with considerable freedom of- 
thouo-ht. The different communities of Christians 
iad their favorite tendencies. Look at the various 
ssits of Christianity around the shores of the Mediter- 
ranvan at the beginning of the third century, and we 
see u, once a bioad diversity of character and ten- 
dency. In the East and among those who spoke the 
Greek knguage we find, that at Alexandria, the city 
where Gieece and Judea had blended their civiliza- 
tion, Chri^ians were disposed to connect philosphy 
with religion; at Antioch in Syria, so long the centre 
of Apostolic missions, they were more disposed to the 
critical study of the Bible ; at Ephesus and in the 
whole of Asia Minor, where St. John had labored so 
long, they were more disposed to urge the practical 
principles of Christianity. Come westward, where 
Rome ruled and the Latin language was spoken, we 
find the idea of an authoritative priesthood more 
strongly enforced and see the germs of the hierarchy 
that Hildebrand finally consolidated. One portion of 
the Western Church, the Christians of North Afiica, 
first of whom was Tertullian and chief of whom was 
Augustine, were occupied most with those doctrines 
and duties that bear upon conversion and exhibit a 
moral strictness which has commended them especially 
to historians of the Evangelical school. But alike in 
Rome and Carthage the Church of the West was the 
champion of spiritual power, whether in church organ* 



12 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

ization acting on numbers^ or by direct appeal sub- 
duing the individual soul. The spirit of Peter and 
Paul seemed to rule the West, that of James and John 
the East. 

We thus see that Augustine was surrounded by 
peculiar influences. He came upon his illustrious 
mission in a pecuhar country at a pecuhar time. A 
citizen of North Africa, he was surrounded by zealo*^ 
whose fervor had been kindled by the revivalist pv^- 
ciples of Tertuliian, and blended either with the st ong 
hierarchical dogmas of his disciple Cyprian, o else 
with the fierce fanaticism of the schismatic Doiatists. 
He lived in the palmy age of the Impeiial Church, 
and in near relations with the most conspicuous per- 
sonages of his day. He was the convert ^jf Ambrose, 
the correspondent of Jerome, the contemporary of 
Chrysostom, the opponent of Pelaj^ius. He was 
brought iuto contact with the chief literary, political 
and ecclesiastical movements of his time, and his life 
more than that of any other man illustrates the in- 
fluences that were brought to bear upon a thinking 
mind in the fourth and fifth centuries. We have rea- 
son to rejoice that so much has been permitted to 
reach us concerning his history, especially concerning 
his trials of faith. 

Augustine was born in the year 354 at Tagaste, an 
obscure Numidian village near Carthage, in North 
Africa. The place of his birth might lead us to 
expect some characteristics akin to those he exhibited. 
He probably bore in his veins the warm blood of a 
Nomad race of Africa, tempered by the influence of the 
Phenician colonists and Koman conquerors. How 



HIS EARLY LIFE. 13 

far each element predominated in his ancestry, we 
have no means of ascertaining. Certain it- is that he 
had much of the African fire^ the Oriental sentiment, 
the Roman fortitude and prudence. His education 
was not happy, aUhough probably its trials and temp- 
tations contributed much to the depth of his experi- 
ence, and the subsequent power of his efforts. His 
father was a Pagan until near the close of life, and a 
man of little elevation of character. His mother was 
a Christian of eminent piety. She evidently had 
much trouble in saving her son from the corrupting 
opinions and manners around him, and in striving to 
educate him in Christian principles. He describes the 
troubles and vices of his boyhood with great minute- 
ness. His graphic pictures of his mischievous pranks, 
as, for example, his robbing the pear-tree w^hen he 
knew the pears were not fit to eat, shows how much 
all bad boys are alike, and that notwithstanding the 
progress of civilization there are not a few truants 
even in our grave New England to remind us of the 
young rogue of Numidia. He does not give a very 
flattering account of his boyish scholarship, and ap- 
pears to have had httle love for his severer studies, 
such as Greek and Mathematics, whilst he had a 
great fondness for the Latin and especially its poetic 
literature. He speaks with as much emphasis of his 
trials in learning the multiplication table as could any 
of our modern dunces or idlers. Yet such was his 
evident vivacity, and especially his fondness for 
poetry and declamation, that his parents thought best 
to give him the advantage of a city school in the 
neighborhood, at Madaura, where he learned gram- 



14 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

mar and rhetoric. He made no great progress there 
either in character or learning, and returned home at 
the age of sixteen, and sank into habits of idleness 
and dissipation. His mother, good Christian as she 
was, constantly expostulated with him, but in vain. 
He treated her not ungently, but paid no regard to 
what seemed to him her womanish talk. At the age 
of seventeen he was sent from home again, and about 
this time he lost his father. At the school in Carthage 
he soon took the lead alike in the studies and the 
dissipations of the scholars. While here, his son 
Adeodatus was born, of an illicit connection. Yet his 
conscience was not wholly dormant, and he had occa- 
sional pangs of remorse. He was not under good 
influences, although he seems to have yearned for 
them. The views of Christianity that were presented 
to him do not appear to have won his assent, much 
less his affections. In his nineteenth year he was 
much impressed by reading a work of Cicero, which 
contained an exhortation to philosophy, and bore the 
name of Hortensius. This kindled within him a 
burning thirst for wisdom, and gave him a disgust for 
the riotous companions with Avhom he had been so 
intimate, a set of dashing bulhes, who were called 
" subverters," and who seem to have had something 
of the character of the '-renowners" of the German 
Universities. He resolved to abandon vice, not so 
much in the spirit of the Gospel as of the Academy, 
not so much because vice is sinful as because it is 
degrading to the dignity of an. intellectual being. 
Such considerations have little power in redeeming 
men of Augustine's mind and tempemment. Philoso- 



HIS MENTAL STRUGGLES. 15 

phy has its place, and is good in its place. But it is 
not religion, nor has it by itself ever done much to 
make men turn from their sins. The best of the 
Greek sages could do little to bring men up to the 
noble ideal which they set forth. What Socrates, 
Plato and Zeno could not do, was not likely to be 
accomplished by the elegant Roman who repeated in 
his own way their ideas. Cicero, and such as he, 
may give some light, may set forth high aims, but 
can afford no vital warmth, no moving power, no 
divine sanctions, to lead men to follow the light and 
seek the high aims. Augustine soon found this out, 
for he was not lacking in shrewdness. His soul 
craved more substantial food than Cicero's beautiful 
speculations on the world and man, God and immor- 
tality. What Rousseau said of the inadequacy of 
philosophy, Augustine felt. The Numidian and the 
Frenchman were much alike in temperament, both 
having strong passions with deep sentiment, and both 
recording their lives in the most candid Confessions 
that have come to us. But the religion which the one 
dreamed of, the other found, although not without 
years of weary wandering and bitter disappointment. 
Without supernatural facts to rest upon in faith, 
philosophy is very vague and delusive, and they who 
accept the same nominal principles find practically 
'little firm ground to rest upon in common. The soul 
of Augustine was like the wind-sown seed, borne 
about from place to place on its air-tossed pinions. 
Not until it rested upon the soil of the Christian vine- 
yard did it take root and blossom. 
^ Augustine had always cherished a great reverence 



16 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

for the name of Christ, and had been so much im- 
pressed by his mother's instructions that, unbeUeving 
as he was, he declares that "whatsoever was without 
that name, though never so learned, polished or true, 
took not entire hold of me." In Cicero's pages he 
missed this name, and felt desirous of learning more 
of Christ from the Scriptures, which he had never 
read, — a fact which gives us no very high idea of the 
state of Christian knowledge in the see of Carthage. 
He set himself to reading the Scriptures, but was very 
much disappointed in them. They seemed far be- 
neath the stateliuess of Cicero. From his rhetorical 
education he had a passion for fine writing, and could 
not as yet appreciate the sublime simplicity of the 
sacred books. This he afterwards confessed, and 
lamented that he did not bring the spirit of humility 
that can interpret the divine word and like a little 
child enter the kingdom of heaven. He was not 
satisfied with the Christianity of the Bible, but sought 
something more complex and philosophical. He was 
just in a state of mind to become the dupe of the 
Manicheans, a sect who endeavored to incorporate a 
system of Oriental philosophy with the doctrines of 
Jesus and the rites of the Church. Most thoughtful 
young men of nineteen or twenty are ambitious of 
finding some philosophical system that shall explain 
all things and give them a theory of the universe. 
The vagaries of the theological students in the Old 
World and the New at present might teach us to be 
charitable to the young Numidian, and find among 
present follies fair parallels for his Manichean extra- 
vagances. This sect declaimed against all authority, 



THE MANICHEANS. 17 

and glorified human reason, while th»y forced upon it 
the wildest dogmas. It undoubtedly numbered many 
profound and earnest minds among its votaries, as all 
bold theories will. It had enough of philosophy to 
attract the inquiring, and enough of assertion to awe 
the simple. It was a strange mingling of Oriental 
pantheism and Christian forms and phraseology. It 
showed a sentimentalism ready to weep at the pluck- 
ing of a radish as if at the extinction of a spark of the 
divine life, and at the same time a hardness of heart 
indifferent to human suffering because of the eternal 
necessity of evil, and scrupling to relieve the hunger 
of the uninitiated on the ground that to give food to 
the unspiritual was imprisoning God's gifts in sinful 
matter, and preventing the spirit that pervades nature 
from disengaging itself from its heavy clogs. The 
men that held this doctrine pleased Augustine more 
than Paul and John. While they gratified his spe- 
culative curiosity, they probably tended to palliate his 
vices as only a necessary emanation from the eternal 
evil. For nine years he is associated with them, much 
to the mortification of his mother, who could with 
diflQculty tolerate his doctrines in her liouse, and 
would have closed her doors against him, but for her 
fervent hope of his conversion. Yet he was an earnest 
seeker for truth, aud while teaching rhetoric, first at 
Tagaste and then at Carthage, his mind was con- 
stantly active. " O truth, truth," cries he, in speak- 
ing of himself, the young enthusiast of twenty, 
"how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul 
pant after thee, when they often and diversely and in 
many and huge books echoed of thee to me, though it 



18 



AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 



were but an echo ! And these were the dishes wherein 
to me, hungering after thee, they, instead of thee, 
served up the sun and moon, beautiful works of thine, 
but yet thy works, not thyself, no, nor thy first works." 
At twenty-nine his faith in Manicheism is considera- 
bly shaken, as he discovers the ignorance and assump- 
tion of many of its disciples, and the insufficiency of 
the doctrine for his needs, and before this he had mis- 
givings of the correctness of the morals of the Mani- 
cheans. He is haunted by skeptical doubts, although 
he cannot yield to them. 

He was restless and unhappy. Disgusted with the 
licentiousness of his scholars at Carthage, and craving 
greater light and a broader sphere, he sailed for Rome. 
Falling sick at the house of a Manichean and still fet- 
tered by his connection with the sect, he teaches 
awhile in Rome after his recovery, and relieves his 
•continued discontent by going to Milan, then the most 
brilliant diocesan city of Italy. Here the main crisis 
of his life came, and the Numidian rhetorician was 
transformed into the great theologian and renowned 
saint. That voyage across the Mediterranean was 
more important in its results than the passage of his 
famous countryman, Hannibal, more than five cen- 
turies before. The teacher of rhetoric and the great 
captain of his age both went to yield to a Roman 
conqueror. Hannibal was overcome by Scipio with 
fatal loss. Augustine to his vast gain was subdued 
by a Roman with a will strong as Scipio's, but with 
weapons mightier than sword and shield. 

At Milan Augustine went to church not with any 
devout intentions, but led by his rhetorical tastes and 



PREACHING OF AMBROSE, ' 19 

by the curiosity so natural in a stranger to hear a 
preacher of unrivalled fame throughout Italy. He 
listened to a man who soon awakened far other feel- 
ings than the luxurious sense of literary beauty or 
oratorical eloquence. The preacher was no other 
than Ambrose, the great prelate of the West, who had 
been forced to become bishop because he had shown 
such wisdom and energy as civil governor ; who bore 
the crosier as heroically as he had borne the sword ; 
who had made the sceptre of the haughty Theodosius 
bow at his feet, and rendered his own anathema 
mightier than the imperial decree. Augustine was 
much struck with the. manner of Ambrose, alike by 
his earnest address and his mode of setting forth the 
Christian doctrines. He became acquainted with him, 
was kindly received, and although by no means con- 
verted, he is evidently within the attraction of that 
mighty will before which all opposition was wont to 
yield. He finds some of his difficulties regarding the 
Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, cleared up 
by the preaching of Ambrose, who evidently inter- 
preted many things figuratively that offend the reason 
when taken literally, and who in spite of his stern 
high-church notions held many of the free, spiritual 
views of the Greek Father, Origen, concerning the 
Bible. There was a vein of poetry too in Ambrose 
that must have won upon the sentiment and imagin- 
ation of Augustine, for this great prelate was author of 
celebrated Catholic hymns and an earnest patron of 
sacred music, which his protege so enthusiastically 
loved. 

Monica, Augustine's mother, heard with no small 



20 



AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 



joy of her son's present tendencies, and joining him at 
Milan, confirmed his good resolves, and rejoiced vastly 
on her own account in the ministrations of Ambrose. 
She hoped to see her son ere long fully embrace Chris- 
tianity, now that he had given up his Manichean no- 
tions. The change in his mind went on. He now 
learned to ascribe evil, that awful reahty that had so 
tormented his intellect as well as perverted his heart, 
to an original perversion of the free-will of man, and 
not to an eternal and necessary existence. One step 
more and he might embrace the Catholic faith. He 
must accept the Church doctrine as to the nature of 
Christ and his relation to the Father. This step he 
must take, not by yielding to authority, but in a way 
congenial with his mind. He fell in with the writings 
of some of those later Platonists, perhaps Plotinus or 
Porphyry, who believed in a philosophical Trinity of 
the Divine nature without believing in Christ, and 
who thus prepared him, as they have prepared many 
thoughtful minds, in ancient and modern times, for 
accepting the Orthodox doctrine upon the subject. A 
champion of the Church like Horsely glories in this 
'fact, as proving the identity between the teachings of 
the best philosophy and the Divine word. So far as 
mere opinions were concerned, Augustine might have 
entered the Catholic Church, as Ambrose seems to 
have desired him to do. Still he lingered, and thirty, 
the age at which a man surely ought to fix upon his 
plan of life and receive his initiation, found him halting 
between the world with its pleasures and honors, and 
religion with its duties and renunciations. At the age 
of thirty-two, his chosen hour came. He had long 



HIS CONVERSION. 21 

Struggled with good success against intellectual doubts, 
now he was to triumph over the passions that had 
held him in such thraldom. 

The stoiy of his conversion to the Christian life is 
perhaps too familiar to be dwelt upon. He had been 
for some time a dihgent student of the Scriptures, 
especially St. Paul's Epistles, those writings which 
have ever been so powerful in meeting the wants 
of persons dissatisfied with themselves, and seeking 
peace. In a retired garden, he was struggling with 
his agitated thoughts, when he overheard a voice, 
which seemed to him miraculous and which probably 
was from the spirit within his own soul, but which 
some suppose came from a child in a neighboring 
house, saying, '• Take and read." These words struck 
him as singularly applicable to his own case, and he 
opened a manuscript of Paul's Epistles which he had 
with him, and his eye fell upon this passage from the 
Romans: — "Not in chambering and wantonness, not 
in rioting and drunkenness, not in strife and envy- 
ing ; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make 
not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." 
This appeal brought him to the practical point. It 
was the true crisis of his life, the key to his thoughts 
and his subsequent labors and influence. In that 
moment, all his past trials, sins, meditations, strug- 
gles, aspirations, concentrated their force, and as he 
turned away from the evil and gave his heart to God, 
the divine spark fell upon him. The fire-baptism 
came, and thenceforth the purification went on, the 
wood, hay and stubble were consumed, the gold, 



22 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

silver and precious stones of the inner temple re- 
mained. 

Who will wonder at his subsequent course ? Not 
appealing to the angry strifes of controversial folios, 
nor resting in the dogmas of doctors of divinity, who 
will marvel that this young Numidian should now 
consecrate his vast powers so earnestly to illustrating 
the free grace of God in converting the soul, and be 
prone to dwell constantly on the w^ickedness of man- 
kind and the glory of the divine mercy, and finally 
incur the danger of merging the freedom of the 
human will in the all-absorbing power of God ? The 
S3^stem of the theologian was an obvious development 
of the experience of the man. Compare his Confes- 
sions with his later theological treatises, and we see 
in the first the lava of the burning mount, and in the 
last that lava hardened into stone, or if you prefer the 
figure, into substantial soil. 

In his thirty-third year he received baptism at the 
hands of Ambrose, together Avith his son, Adeodatus, 
a youth of rare promise, although a child of shame. 
His mother's cup was now full of joy, and she w^as 
ready to go in peace to the world so long in her con- 
templations. His account of her death is the most 
beautiful passage in his celebrated Confessions. She 
was to die on her way home to Africa, the year of her 
son's baptism. His bearing towards her, always ten- 
der, was now full of pathos and beauty. He de- 
scribes an earnest conversation with her a few days 
before her death ; God and heaven were the theme, 
and mother and son felt that there was between them 
a spiritual communion that the grave could not sever. 



23 

He closed her eyes, and committed her body to the 
earth in a land of strangers. He felt desolate indeed, 
but not in despair. The good angel of his whole life 
was not with him in the woild any more, but her 
blessing remained. On the morning after her burial, 
he awoke with tlie words of one of the hymns of 
Ambrose, sounding through his mind like a chant of 
heavenly choirs. It is the hymn beginning thus: 

Maker of all, the Lord, 

And Ruler of the height. 
Who robing day in light, hast poured 

Soft slumbers o'er the night; 
That to our limbs the power 

Of toil may be renewed, 
And hearts be raised that sink and cower, 

And sorrows be subdued. 

He closes the part of his Confessions that relates to 
his years of wandering and trial, with a touching 
tribute to his mother's memory. He returned to 
Africa, soon became a priest of the Church, and in 
seven years from his baptism is raised to the Epis- 
copal chair of Hippo, the royal city of Numidia, 
where he passed his whole subsequent life, an in- 
fluential prelate, and a thinker of power unequalled 
in his time, and perhaps unsurpassed by any of the 
great theologians of any age, either in the force or 
the effect of his works. His life, subsequent to his 
return, is niore to be learned from his works than 
'from any remarkable events. All he wrote bore the 
coloring of his early experience, therefore haVe we 
been so minute in detailing its various stages. 

As to the time of composition, Augustine divides 



24 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

his works into four classes. First, those which were 
written between his conversion and baptism ; the 
chief of which were some philosophical essays, com- 
posed in the pleasant retirement of the villa of his 
friend, Yerecmidus, and which, as Schleiermacher has 
justly remarked, seem to be the Tusculan (Questions 
of the philosophic convert, a treatment of familiar 
academic topics with reference to his new convictions. 
Next come the works written after his baptism and 
before his taking orders in the Church ; a period of 
about three years, spent, as probably by St. Paul 
under similar circumstances, in retirement, medi- 
tation and study, saddened however by the death of 
his son. The principal productions of this period 
were his hooks upon the morals of the Manicheans 
and upon those of the Catholic Church, part of his 
treatise on free-will, and the work upon true religion. 
Reluctantly on his part, he was made presbyter by 
the bishop of Hippo, Valerius, and seems to have 
passed the four next years in labors mainly of a prac- 
tical character, such as expositions of Scripture, pas- 
toral addresses, and short ethical essays, although he 
was by no means so absorbed in parish cares as to 
forget paying his respects occasionally to his old 
friends, the Manicheans, for whose benefit he com- 
pleted his work on the will. Towards the end of the 
year 395, being at the age of forty-one, he was 
ordained assistant bishop to Valerius, and in a year 
was left to the sole charge of the diocese by the death' 
of his principal. From that time to his own decease 
in the year 430, his most celebrated works were 
written and his greatest influence was exerted. In 



HIS DEATH. 25 

brilliant succession came forth his Confessions, his 
" De Trinitate," his treatises against the Pelagians, 
and his master-piece, the City of God. In this pe- 
riod, besides attending to vast official duties, he re- 
corded the story of his own experience, wrote at great 
length upon all the principal controversies of the day, 
opposing now the Donatists, now the Arians, now the 
Pelagians, vindicated the kingdom of Christ against 
the kingdoms of this world, and before sinking into 
the grave calmly reviewed all his writings and pub- 
lished his corrections in the two books of Retrac- 
tationes. 

There was a singular connection between the topic 
that inspired our author's last great work, the " City 
of God," and his own fate. He died in the midst of 
a barbaric invasion which brought a second Alaric to 
the gates of Hippo, so long the city of his residence. 
After having revised his most important works as if 
aware of approaching death, he was destined to 
breathe his last in a scene of tumult and carnage 
little in keeping with his many years of quiet life. 
Hordes of half Christianized barbarians, under Gen- 
seric, the Yandal, were ravaging the land. Three 
months after the commencement of the siege of 
Hippo, Augustine died, inexpressibly grieved at the 
evil prospects of the church and the people ; happy in 
seeking the better land, in being spared the horrors 
of beholding his altar desecrated and his flock scat- 
tered. Yet dark as we are assured by his disciple 
Possidius his forebodings were, his hopes for his reli- 
gion and his race could not fail. 

'^ One cannot think, without sadness," says the 
2 



26 ATJGFSTINE AND HIS TIMES", 

French biogFapher Poujoulatj '^of the images whieb 
must have embittered the last days of the bishop of 
Hippo, if the contemplation of the world invisible and 
imperishable had not softened them. The City of 
the earthy whose origin and vicissitudes Augustine had 
traced, appeared to him under very dismal aspects, and 
it is towards the City of God, of which he was also the 
Catholic Homer, that all his hopes were lifted. We. 
however, believe that a blesssed light flashed across 
the night of his tribulation at bis closing hour ; we 
believe that Augustine, by the power of his genius^ 
and above all by a ray from on high, hailed the new 
world that was to spring from the old and doomed 
world, saw futm'e ages receiving all their glory from 
the inspirations of Christianity, the East becoming 
young again and vivacious under the footsteps of 
barbarians, as nature is more brilliant and the air 
more pure after a storm, and finally the whole uni- 
verse advancing to moral unity beneath the banner of 
the cross. This vision of the future was like a golden 
veil thrown over the eaith then so deeply distractjed.'^ 
—Vol. iii. p. 305-306. 

He who wrote the City of God must, upon his death- 
bed, have believed in a power that would subdue the 
barbaric lion into obedience to the Lamb of God. 
History has by no means altogether defeated the sub- 
lime anticipations of this great prophet of the Cross. 

Thus passed away at the age of seventy-six, the re- 
nowned Augustine, the illustrious thinker of his age, 
and next to Athanasius the chief dictator of the creed 
of the Church. 

It would be in place now to take a survey of the 



POUJOULAT. 27 

works, characteristics and influence of our saint, did 
time and the reader's patience allow. We must defer 
such a survey to another occasion, and pause from 
our task with a few words relating to the age of 
Augustine and the changes which have since passed 
over the world. 

The work of M. Poujoulat recalls that age with 
remarkable vividness, and places it in striking con- 
nection with our own. He has not apparently added 
anything of value to the critical labors of Tillemont 
and the Benedictines, or of Neander and the German 
historians, although he has, he declares, faithfully 
perused the saint's entire works in the original, — no 
small task for an enthnsiastic Frenchman, such as he 
shows himself to be. But he has done what no pre- 
vious historian has done. He has visited the scenes 
of Augustine's life and labors, wrought them with 
great beauty into his narrative, and thus by a happy 
combination of the tourist and the antiquarian he has 
probably given far greater charm to his subject than 
mere scholarship, however vast, or philosophy, how- 
ever profound, could possibly do. He is evidently Yery 
familiar with Augustine's various works, and gives an 
analysis of them in a very pleasing, popular style. 
His Roman orthodoxy does not permit him however 
to see the decided predestinarian notions of his author, 
nor to allow to Jansenius and Calvin any ground for 
laying claim to Augustine as an advocate of their 
views of human inability and divine election. He is 
obviously a warm devotee of the Roman Catholic 
Church, although not in priestly orders. He calls 
himself a man of the w^orld, yet he mu|t be a pretty 



28 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

Strict confessor of the faith to be the favored protege of 
the Archbishop of Paris, as his book denotes. There 
is considerably more of the Popish stamp upon the be- 
ginning and close, than on the main body of the 
work. Opposite the title-page is a poor Hthograph of 
Mmillo's picture of Saint Augustine and the angel, 
which represents a child-angel, with a shell in his 
hand, telling him that it is as vain to try to solve the 
mystery of the Trinity as to try to empty the ocean 
with that shell. Then follows a patronizing letter 
from the Archbishop of Paris, and at the close of the 
third volume a long correspondence is appended, de- 
scribing the pompous restoration to Africa of part of 
the remains of St. Augustine — the bones of the right 
arm, which by order of the Pope, and by an escort of 
bishops and priests, were taken from the Cathedral of 
Pavia in Italy, borne across the Mediterranean in the 
steamer Gassendi, and with solemn masses and pro- 
cessions deposited October 30, 1842, in the chapel of 
Bona, not far from the site of the saint's original tomb. 
The sacred relic was first carried to Augustine's monu- 
ment, where imposing ceremonies were exhibited be- 
fore a large and various crowd of Christians and Ma- 
hometans, soldiers and ecclesiastics. The monument, 
which has been recently erected is an altar of white 
marble, and bears a bronze statue which looks to- 
wards the sea and that France " which now shows 
herself so worthy," say Poujoulat, " to reckon Augus- 
tine henceforth among her own children." The 
French nationality indicated in this last clause per- 
vades M. Poujoulat's whole work. Yet he enters 
very fully in^o the spirit of Augustine, and by no 



HIPPO REVISITED. 29 

means allows the patriotism of the Frenchman to 
hide the faith and charity of the Christian. His love 
for his author appears somewhat eloquently in a clos- 
ing passage of his work : 

" In completing this work, something of sadness 
moves my heart. I am about to take leave of a good 
and excellent friend, with whom I have long held con- 
verse ; my days and often my nights have been 
passed in listening to Saint Augustine, in interrogating 
his genius, in following him in the diversity of his 
thoughts and his cares ; I have made myself his con- 
temporary, his disciple, the witness of his labors and 
of his virtues, the companion of his footsteps through 
the world ; and lo ! now from year to year, from labor 
to labor, from conflicts to conflicts, I have seen this 
great man sink into the tomb, or rather ascend 
towards God ! and these last pages are like perfumes 
borne to his tomb ; and what I loved has vanished, and 
like the men of Galilee after the ascension of the 
divine Master, I stand still upon the mountain, and 
seek Saint Agustine in heaven ! Of all the masters 
of religious science, the Bishop of Hippo is the one 
who has given me the best comprehension of Christi- 
anity, who has introduced me farthest into the invisible 
world. Gratitude has sometimes erected monuments 
sacred to memory ; my hands are too feeble to build 
pyramids ; all that I have been able to do, is to en- 
grave upon a stone fragile as my days the great name 
of Saint Augustine, in remembrance of the benefit I 
have received." — Yol. iii. pp. 327-8, 

We translate but two short passages more, which 
afford a good idea of the peculiar value of what he 



30 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

has done to give freshness to the biography of his 
hero. They contain a sketch of the present appear- 
ance of ancient Hippo. 

" The fig-tree, the ohve, and the apricot, meadows 
and harvests cover the pleasant dechvities of Hippo 
and the whole space once occupied with habitations ; 
nature has stretched its richest mantle over the sepul- 
chre of the ancient city; vegetation has taken the 
place of a whole people, and when, pilgrim of history, 
I have trodden this illustrious soil, I have not heard 
the thousand sounds of a great city, but only the mur- 
mur of the Seybous, the song of birds hidden in the 
flowery thicket, and the prolonged lowing of cows 
guarded by a Moorish herdsman. This place in 
which Providence had placed a torch which was seen 
from the four corners of the world, I loved to behold 
thus decked with all the treasures of creation ; I heard 
with joy the melodies of the nightingale at the place 
from which Augustine taught men harmonies divine 
and eternal." 

"Seen from the rising ground of the Seybous, the 
high land of Hippo which we call the hill of Saint 
Augustine's momument, presents outlines of infinite 
grace ; it detaches itself from the plain by harmonious 
and gentle lines, whose expression is beyond description. 
This hill seems as if it had fallen from the hand of 
God to serve as a pedestal to the most profound think- 
er of Christian antiquity. It offers to the imagination 
something of the gracefulness that marks the pro- 
portions of Saint Augustine's genius. This man, who 
saw in creation as in the arts steps by which to ascend 
to God, was fitly placed upon the banks of the Sey- 



CHANGES IN CHRISTENDOM. 31 

bous, in the midst of a charming country, in face of 
the sea, the Edough and the Atlas, and nature was un- 
doubtedly one of his motives for loving his dear Hippo 
so fondly."— Vol. i. pp. 197-8 : 2C2-3. 

As we close our sketch with this vivid picture before 
us, we cannot but glance at the changes that have 
come over Christendom since Augustine^s time, 
Could the legend, preserved by Gibbon, and told of 
seven young men in that age, who were said to have 
come forth alive from a cave at Ephesus, where they 
had been immured for death by the Pagan Emperor 
Decius, and whence th^y wer€ said to have emerged, 
awakened from nearly two centuries of slumber, to 
revisit the scenes of their youth and to behold with 
astonishment the cross displayed triumphant, where 
once the Ephesian Diana reigned supreme ; — could 
this legend be virtually fulfilled in Augustine, dating 
the slumber from the period of his decease ] could the 
great Latin Father have been saved from dissolution 
and have sunk into a deep sleep in the tomb where 
Possidius and his clerical companions laid him with 
solemn hymns and eucharistic sacrifice, while Gen- 
seric and his Vandals were storming the city gates ; 
and could he but come forth in our day, and look upon 
our Christendom, would he not be more startled than 
were the seven sleepers of Ephesus ? There indeed 
roll the waves of the same great sea* there gleam the 
waters of the river on which so many times he had 
gazed, musing upon its varied path from the Atlas 
mountains to the Mediterranean, full of lessons in 
human life ; there stretches the landscape in its beau- 
ty, rich with the olive and the fig-tree, the citron and 



32 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

the jujube. But how changed all else. The ancient 
Numidia is ruled by the French, the countrymen of 
Martin and Hilary ; it is the modern Algiers. Hippo 
is only a ruin, and near its site is the bustling manu- 
facturing town of Bona. At Constantine, near by, 
still lingers a solitary church of the age of Constan- 
tine, and the only building to remind Augustine of the 
churches of his own day. In other places, as at Bona, 
the mosque has been converted into the Christian 
temple, and its mingled emblems might tell the 
astounded saint how the Cross had struggled with the 
Crescent, and how it had conquered. Go to whatever 
church he would on the 28th of August, he would 
hear a mass in commemoration of his death, and 
might learn that similar services were offered in every 
country under the sun and in the imperial language 
w^hich he so loved to speak. Let him go westward to 
the sea coast, and he finds the new city, Algiers, and 
if he arrived at a favorable time he might hear the 
cannon announcing the approach of the Marseilles 
steamer, see the people throng to the shore for the last 
French news, and thus contemplate at once the 
mighty agencies of the modern world, powder, print, 
and steam. Although full of amazement, it would 
not be all admiration. He would find httle in the motley 
population of Jews, Berbers, Moors, and French to 
console him for the absence of the loved people of his 
charge, whose graves not a stone would appear to 
mark. 

Should he desire to know how modern men philoso- 
phized in reference to the topics that once distracted 
his Manichean period, he would find enough to interest 



RELATION TO THIS AGE. 33 

and astonish him in the pages of Spinoza and Leibnitz 
Swedenborg and Schelling ; and would be no indif- 
ferent student of the metaphysical creeds of Descartes 
and Locke and Kant. Much of novelty would un- 
doubtedly appear to him united with much familiar 
and ancient. Should he inquire into the state of 
theology through Christendom, in order to trace the 
influence of his favorite doctrines of original sin and 
elective grace, he would learn that they had never in 
their decided form been favorites with the Catholic 
Church, that the imperial mother had canonized his 
name and proscribed his peculiar creed, and that the 
principles that fell with the walls of the hallowed Port 
Royal have found their warmest advocates in Switzer- 
land, in Scotland, and far America,| beyond the 
Roman communion. He would recognize his mantle 
on the shoulders of Calvin of Geneva and his fol- 
lowers, Knox of Scotland, and those mighty Puritans 
who trusting in God and his decreeing will, colonized 
our own New England, and brought with them a 
faith and virtue that have continued, while their stern 
dogmas have been considerably mitigated in the creed 
of their children. The Institutes of Calvin would 
assure him that the modern age possessed thinkers 
clear and strong as he, and the work of Edwards on 
the Will would probably move him to bow his head 
as before a dialectician of a logic more adamantine 
than his own, and make him yearn to visit the land 
of a divine who united an intellect so mighty with a 
spirit so humble and devoted. Should he*come among 
us, he would find multitudes to respect his name and 
to accept his essential principles, though few, if any, 
2*" 



34 AUGUSTINE AND HIS TIMES. 

to agree with him in his views of the doom of infants 
or of the Hmited offer of redemption. He would think 
much of our orthodoxy quite Pelagian, even when 
tested by the opinion of present champions of the 
ancient faith. In the pages of Channing he would 
think his old antagonist, Pelagius, revived, with re- 
newed vigor, enlarged philosophy, and added elo- 
quence. He might call this perhaps too fond cham- 
pion of the dignity of man by the name, Pelagius, — 
like him in doctrine, like him, as the name denotes, a 
dweller by the sea. Who shall say how much the 
influences of position helped to form the two cham- 
pions of human nature, the ancient Briton and the 
modern New Englander, both in part at least of the 
same British race, both nursed by the sea-side, the 
one by the shores of Wales or Brittany, the other by 
the beach of Rhode Island. "No spot on earth," says 
Channing, '' has helped to form me so much as that 
beach. There I lifted up my voice in praise amidst 
the tempest. There, softened by beauty, I poured out 
my thanksgiving and contrite confessions. There, in 
reverential sympathy with the mighty power around 
me, I became conscious of power within." 

How long before the human soul shall reach so full 
a development, that faith and works, reason and 
authority, human abihty and divine grace shall be 
deemed harmonious, and men cease to be divided by 
an Augustine and Pelagius, or an Edwards and 
Channing ? Although this consummation may not 
soon, if ever, be, and opinions may still differ, charity 
has gained somewhat in the lapse of centuries. Those 
who are usually considered the followers of Pelagius 



CONCLUSION. 35 

have been first to print a complete work of Augustine 
in America — his Confessions. The Roman Church, 
backed by imperial power and not checked by Augus- 
tine, drove the intrepid Briton into exile and an 
unknown grave. He who more than any other man 
wore his mantle of moral freedom in our age died, 
honored throughout Christendom, and the bell of a 
Komish cathedral joined in the requiem as his remains 
were borne through the thronged streets of the citj 
of his home. 



1846- 



ir. 

AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS* 



The beautiful edition of the works of Augustine^ 
whose title is placed below, leaves nothing- to be 
desired by the student who would acquaint himself 
with the genius and character of this great thinker of 
the Ancient Church. It would exhaust our page& 
even*to mention the names of his various productions. 
We can speak only of a few, and of those which 
stand at the head of their respective classes. 

As a man, Augustine reveals himself most fully in 
his Confessions. For an excellent English edition of 
them, with important notes and illustrations, we are 
indebted to the Oxford Library of the Fathers to 
which we have already referred. All who are ac- 
quainted with this book will allow it to be as remark- 
able as any that was ever written. It unveils without 
the least reserve a life of singular experience. The 

* Opera S. Aureni Angustini. Post Lovaniensium Theologorum 
Recensionem casiigata, etc. Opera et Studio Monachorum S. Bene- 
DicTi. Paris. 1836—39. 

Works of Saint Avgustine. Revised and corrected from the 
edition of the Theologians of Louvain. By the Benedictine Fa- 
thers. Eleven Vols, in 22 Parts, 



HIS CONFESSIONS. 37 

substance of its narative we have already given 
Notwithstanding its details of early vices, it is worthy 
the perusal of every thoughtful mind. In deep and 
impassioned devotion, and in boldness and range of 
thought, it blends the piety of the Psalms of David 
with something of the daring meditation of the Plato- 
nic Dialogues. It cannot be appreciated at all with- 
out careful attention to the progress of the author's 
mind. Let one only get hold of the main thread of 
the narrative, and there is no fear of receiving any 
harm from its pages. 

Yet we cannot but wonder, certainly at first thought, 
that a grave prelate at the sober age of forty-three 
should write such confessions. However, on reflection, 
the fact is by no means unaccountable. Upon reach- 
ing any important period in life, men of thought are 
very apt to review the past, and form plans for the 
future ; to look back from the present eminence along 
the road they have travelled, and forward along the 
way they are to advance. The bishop of Hippo, 
when he found himself at the head of an important 
see, might very naturally retrace his singular path, 
consider his former trials and present failings, and 
rally his powers anew for the future. If we feel dis- 
posed to accuse him of want of delicacy in speaking 
so freely of his youthful licentiousness, we must remem- 
ber that much that we call delicacy is but a fashion 
of the time, and has failed to bear that name with 
many of the wisest and holiest of our race ; and 
besides, that his views of his conversion and of bap- 
tismal regeneration would lead him to regard all that 
took place previously, as having little, if any connec- 



38 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

tion with his present spiiitual state ; so that he wrote 
as if recording the passions and sins virtually of 
another person. We have been offended at much in 
these confessions, but the offence has passed away- 
after reading them in connection with the progress of 
his views and life. It surely must have been no 
ordinary piety that could pass in review such a life, 
and make every past sin so glowing a lesson of faith 
and devotion. In fact, the high tone of fervor that 
pervades the whole book surprises us more than any- 
thing. It seems unnatural that so large a volume 
should be written in the strain of prayer or of direct 
communion with God. There is nothing like it that 
we remember in the sacred literature of our age. 
There are enough of records of signal religious experi- 
ence, enough of pious volumes of meditation. But 
we look in vain for a work in which the whole life, 
with all its temptations and sins, all its studies in 
philosophy, all its struggles, failures and successes, 
has the attitude and breathes the language of devotion, 
and when it is not a prayer, is a conversation with 
God. Yet we see enough of the workings of religion 
in many writers to understand the kind of feeling that 
animated Augustine, and to lead us to ascribe its 
remarkable degree in his case to his singular experi- 
ence and peculiar temperament. 

We were never but once in society reminded of 
Augustine's fervent tone, and that was in conversation 
with a very humble person, who inherited the blood 
which the African sun warms into such fervor, and 
who, in the simplicity of Christian faith and gratitude, 
delighted to speak of a life extended to a century, in 



HIS CONFESSIONS. 39 

something of the same impassioned devotion that 
marks the confessions of the renowned Bishop of 
Hippo. It is undoubtedly tlie burning piety of this 
book, that has given Augustine so strong a hold upon 
Christian hearts in all ages, and made his name 
precious to many who have little sympathy with his 
pecuhar doctrines. He must be a man of cold heart 
and narrow mind, who will not rejoice at the progress 
of the writer's faith, bless his passage from the Mani- 
ch can's deifying of evil and veiling of the true God in 
darkness, into the faith that regards evil as the per- 
version of created good, and looks to a benignant 
Deity made manifest through a divine man, and call- 
ing the soul to relations of personal affection with 
himself The eleventh book of Confessions, which 
describes the writer's remaining temptations, and the 
two closing books, which give his meditations on the 
creation, may serve to explain the aim of his work. 
The record of his mind is thus brought up to the time 
of writing, and closes with a revelation of the thoughts 
that were then struggling within him. These thoughts 
on creation, time, eternity, the soul, God, are not 
wholly clear, but are intelligible enough to show what 
process was going on in a mind so reverent and so 
daring. The dimness comes not from a passing 
cloud, but rather from the nebula of a forming world. 
We must now speak of Augustine as a controver- 
sialist, and as we cannot touch upon all his contro- 
versies, we select his principal one, his opposition to 
Pelagius. The man is always to be pitied, who is 
called to take part in a controversy that arrays against 
him the force of his own previous labors, although the 



40 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

inconsistency may be more apparent than real. The 
orthodox Protestant, after having battled against Papal 
pretensions to infallibility, is always somewhat puz- 
zled when a Christian of the liberal school turns 
against him his own weapons, and in the name of 
reason, Scripture and liberty challenges the authority 
of his dogmas. So too the liberal Christian, after 
arguing with the Orthodox, is troubled when the free- 
thinker takes the same attitude against all authority 
in religion, and denies the right of any man to judge 
for another as to what is Scripture, or whether Scrip- 
ture is infallible. He must be an able controver- 
siahst, who can maintain his ground well against a 
double assault, and whilst he charges the enemy in 
front, does not leave the rear defenceless. Augustine 
was placed in a similar position between two antago- 
nists. As a convert from the Manicheans, he of 
course felt himself called upon to deny the necessity 
and eternity of evil and advocate the free-will of man. 
In the zeal of his new faith he began his work on the 
free-will before he left Rome, and completed it after 
becoming a presbyter in Africa. His conversation, 
letters, and sermons exhibited the same tone. His 
efforts were concentrated upon one chief point, the 
Manichean heresy and its antidote. He produced 
great effect by his labors in this direction. His con- 
version had created as much sensation among his for- 
mer associates, as would the conversion of a Paulus 
or Strauss among the German neologists of our own 
day. Crowds thronged to hear the famous neophyte, 
and among them not a few of his old companions in 



PELAGIUS. 41 

error. He won signal laurels, and many hardened 
heretics acknowledged the power of his appeal. 

This was well, and Augustine blessed God for 
having made him the instrument of so glorious a 
work. But when, some years after, ther monks Pela- 
gius and Coelestius began to speak and write of the 
dignity of man, the power of the will, the value of 
self-reliance, and to make human effort more con- 
spicuous than supernatural grace, Augustine evidently 
felt not a little troubled. In fact, so late in life as the 
time of composing his Retractations, a man of nearly 
four-score years, on the verge of the grave, he recurs 
to the charge of inconsistency brought against him by 
the Pelagians, and labors not a little to reconcile the 
statements in his earlier work on the free-will with 
those of the treatise on nature and grace. We do 
not see that there is good ground for accusing him of 
any shuffling arts or truckling expediency. His change 
of position was the natural result of the progress of 
his mind under its peculiar experiences and circum- 
stances. He had been led to reject the monstrous 
error of the Manicheans, that evil is an eternal ne- 
cessity, in fact, a God ; and very honestly he attacked 
this doctrine, and asserted the origin of evil in human 
will. He had also been converted from his errors and 
sins by an agency not his own, by human ministra- 
tions and direct divine grace ; thus in his conversion 
he had the fundamental principle of the doctrines of 
original sin, election, and free grace, which he after- 
wards urged with such power. This principle would, 
in the nature of things act with an increasing force, 
as he felt the fearful power of evil around him, the 



42 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

obstacles to the diffusion of Christianity, and the need 
of trusting in the Divine grace. What at first he 
vaguely hints, he at last boldly urges, — that human 
freedom and existing evil are to be reconciled by the 
doctrine that tnan was created free, but lost his free- 
will in the first transgression, was then cut off from 
Divine communion, the whole race virtually acting 
in the first man, and that nothing but the overpower- 
ing grace of God can restore man to his freedom, 
remove original sin, and renew the communion with 
Heaven. Thus we have the great elements of his 
system, the doctrines of original sin and irresistible 
grace. Pelagius maintained opposite ground, main- 
tained that all men were born as pure as Adam, and 
might keep so by a proper use of their faculties, and 
of the Divine aid offered to all. Thus the greatest 
controversy in Christendom, next to that between 
Athanasius and Arius, sprung up ; a controversy that 
has been renewed in every age, and probably will be 
renewed until the end of time, for its origin lies in the 
various constitution and' experience of men. 

"Wrong is done to Augustine, and to the true bear- 
ing of this controversy, by ascribing the formation of 
his opinions and the change from his previous ground, 
to his hostility to Pelagius and his doctrines. This 
charge has become a common-place thing, and is 
found in quarters as various as our English historian 
Priestley and the Germen Gieseler. Schleiermacher 
impeached its truth, and Neander has demonstrated 
its falsity. The latter has shown conclusively, that 
Augustine declared opinions substantially the same as 
those he advocated against Pelag^ius lona^ before the 



PELAGIUS. 43 

Controversy sprung" up, and appeals in proof to a let- 
ter to Simplician, bishop of Milan, as long before as the 
the year 397. The two tendencies now at issue had 
long existed in the Christian Church, and only wanted 
the right men to bring them to a crisis. Augustine 
and Pelagius were the men to do this, marked out 
for it probably by native disposition and temperament, 
surely by education and experience. In the one we 
see the enthusiastic apostle of faith and grace, in the 
other the mild champion of conscientious duty and 
moral freedom, in fact the Paul and the James of the 
Church in its imperial age. Like Paul, Augustine 
had been converted, as it seemed to him, by a direct 
sign from heaven after a life of fierce passion ; like 
James, Pelagius had been apparently a disciple from 
the beginning, and had no violent nature to subdue. 
These same opposing characteristics appear in the 
third century in the fiery Tertullian, a convert from 
heathen errors, and the mild and philosophic Origen, 
who had been educated in the bosom of the Church ; 
nay, they characterize the general tone of the theology 
of the Greek and of the Roman Churches as distin- 
guished from each other. 

Pelagius received Christianity more directly from 
the East. He was intimate with Rufinus, a pupil of 
the liberal, perhaps the latitudinarian, Origen. He 
was a Briton, and of course educated in a church that 
derived its principles from the East, through mission- 
aries from Gaul, as was the case with all the Celtic 
Christians. Michelet will have it that Pelagius was 
a native of Brittany, that province of Prance, so distin- 
guished for personal freedom and individuality, the 



44 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

land of Abelard, the great liberalist of the middle 
ages, and of Descartes, the father of modern meta- 
physics. We will not try to spoil the eloquent 
Frenchman's brilliant analogies, especially as his view 
does not essentially militate with the common opinion 
as to the country of Pelagius. Whether born in Eng- 
land, Wales or France, he of course was of Celtic 
blood, and subject to the same tendencies of religion 
and temperament, and in either case deserves his 
name, Pelagios^ the dweller by the sea. His doc- 
trines show traces of themselves in the remains of the 
Celtic Church, whether we consider the monks of lona 
in the Hebrides, or of Lerins in France, or whether 
we look to the Culdees of Scotland and Ireland. 

As a monk, Pelagius must have been saved from 
Augustine's temptations and conflicts, and both from 
position and temperament he must have viewed the 
Divine Being, human nature, and Christian salvation 
differently from the flaming Numidian doomed to such 
struggles with error and vice, and saved at last 
through a baptism of. fire. We aim not to enter into 
the particulars of their controversy. Their lives in- 
terpret its origin, and their mode of conducting it 
reflects honor upon their temper. This controversy 
has been continued virtually in all ages, yet to the 
end of time the names of the Numidian bishop and the 
British monk will be used to designate the rival 
opinions concerning the nature of man and the way 
of salvation. Neither the ghostly and imperious St. 
Bernard contesting the claims of reason and will with 
the elegant and rationalizing Abelard, nor the dog- 
matic Italian, Aquinas, battling with the subtle Briton, 



PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY. 45 

Scotus, nor the Jesuits strugging with the Jansenists, 
nor the Calvinists with the Arminians, nor the Evan- 
gehcal with the Liberal sects, have been able to eclipse 
the original controversy or hide the names of the 
original combatants. They were first in the open 
field, and fought the battle well. Yiewed in the broad 
vision and calm light of subsequent centuries, their 
experience and position so interpret and justify. their 
opinions as to teach us charity, if not to silence de- 
bate, and to make us wish that modern controversial- 
ists would always make allowance for diversity of 
gifts, and strive, as did Augustine and Pelagius, to 
show that under that diversity there may be the same 
spirit. Augustine spoke of his antagonist respectfully 
and even affectionately. We cannot praise him for 
acquiescing in the imperial decree for the heretic's 
final banishment; but while we condemn his course, 
we must not forget how wide a range of good men 
even in modern times the condemnation of intolerance 
comprises. Only he who advocates the broad tolera- 
tion first asserted in modern times by the founder of 
the State of Rhode Island, can presume to assail the 
great name of Augustine for his treatment of Pelagius. 
If we wish to see the difference between intolerance of 
heart and intolerance merely as a result of custom, 
we must compare Jerome, the monk of Bethlehem, 
with Augustine, the theologian of Hippo. The con- 
duct of Jerome is open to universal censure, except by 
those who are as cynical as he, — watch-dog of the 
Church, as he was proud of being called, and making 
it his especial business to bark at all heretics, being, 
as Jortin facetiously remarks, the founder of the great 



46 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

and growing- sect of barkers. The tone in which he 
abuses Pelagius, and also the less questionable reform- 
ers, Jovinian and Yigilantius, reminds us of the 
language with which that noted divine of his time in 
Massachusetts, Cotton Mather, heaped his epithets of 
odium upon Roger Williams and Samuel Gorton of 
Rhode Island. 

Although we cannot ascribe Augustine's doctrines of 
sin and grace to his controversy, we may ascribe to this 
something of the rigor and exclusiveness with which 
he held them. Theological controversy is always 
dangerous, and each party is far more apt to hurt him- 
self than his opponent, to warp his own mind than to 
work his opponent's conversion. The two looked at 
different sides of Christian salvation, the one most 
upon the human, the other most upon the Divine side, 
until by too exclusive contemplation they became one- 
sided in their views, and Pelagius was in danger of a 
self-reliance that leaned towards self-righteousness, 
and Augustine verged towards the borders of fatal- 
ism. Now that very few, if any, adopt the whole ex- 
tent of Augustine's creed, we stand in no fear of con- 
tradiction in ascribing something of this evil to his 
strifes. He was made too much a man of one idea, 
and might have been narrowed down into a mere dog- 
matist, had not his position soon called him to treat a 
topic as broad as Christendom. 

Before passing to his treatise on that topic, the City 
of God, let us observe, that the emphasis, with which 
Augustine urged the power of original sin and the 
need of divine grace, must have tended strongly to 
guard the Christian Church against some peculiar 



DOCTRINES OF GRACE. 47 

dangers, especially that of arrogant formalism and 
self-righteousness, and was needed, moreover, in an 
age of singular tumult and wickedness, to save the 
faithful from despair and lead them to trust in a power 
whose grace is beyond human force or understand- 
ing. His system is liable to run into Antinomianism 
or the disparagement of good works, as Augustine saw 
that in some cases it did, although he denied that this 
was a just consequence, and rebuked the authors of 
the Antinomian movement, the monks of Adrumetum. 
It is but fair to say, that however differently we might 
infer from the nature of the case, those denominations 
of Christians who have inclined to the Augustinian 
school have been peculiarly strict in morals and zeal- 
ous of good works, as has been the fact with the Jan- 
senists and Calvinists of modern times. The sense of 
sin thus inculcated works mightily upon the soul, and 
when thus wrought upon, its energies always seem to 
move earnestly, and the very instincts of our nature 
act of themselves, little mindful of the dogma that 
denies free agency. It is chiefly when the Augustinian 
doctrines are held loosely and in the decline of de- 
vout fervor, that their mischief appears and practical 
fatalism begins and Antinomianism rages; as the 
grape torn from its stem, ferments and becomes 
the intoxicating wine. The Pelagian doctrines, 
when held earnestly, tend to invigorate the powers 
and to enforce Christian faith with something of 
stoical energy. But when held without much earnest- 
ness, they tend to great laxity, not indeed to fierce 
fanaticism, but to merely worldly decency, a morality 
without faith and a religion without prayer. It is 



48 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

some cause of congratulation, that neither class of 
doctrines has prevailed exclusively in the world, in the 
Catholic or Protestant churches, nor is Ukely so to pre- 
vail in time to come. 

We leave speaking of the controversy between the 
African bishop and the British monk by quoting some 
anonymous lines, which presented themselves to us 
whilst writing upon this topic. 

" To some hath God his word addressed 
'Mid symbols of his ire ; 
And made his presence manifest 
In whirlwind, storm, and fire ; 
Tracing with^burning lines of flame 
On trembling hearts his holy name. 

To some,' the solemn voice has spoken 

In life's serene retreat ; 

Where on the still heart sounds have broken, 

As from the mercy seat, 

Swelling in the soft hai'monies, 

That float on evening's tranquil breeze." 

In such diversity the word of God came to the two 
champions now passing before us. Let those throw at 
their monuments the first stone, who have had a 
deeper sense of Christian duty, or illustrated their faith 
by a purer or more devoted life. 

It was happy for Augustine's fame that he under- 
took to write the City of God, sad as was the event 
that first inspired the work. It is unquestionably the 
noblest monument of thought and learning that Chris- 
tian antiquity affords. It was written upon a subject 
which might have kindled the inspiration of the He- 
brew prophets, while it demanded all the knowledge 



THE CITY OF GOD. 49 

lliat philosophy, literature and divinity could afford. 
The position of Augustine and the ruUng minds of 
his church hore i^reat resemblance to that of the 
Hebrew prophets, who flourished in the declining days 
of the national glory. As then the Assyrians were 
pouring their barbaric hordes in torrents upon Judah 
and the civilized nations of the world, so now the 
Goths of the North were sending down their swarm- 
ing hosts against the Christian empire, had already 
stormed the walls of Rome, and threatened the ruin 
of all that was fairest and holiest on earth. When 
Augustine embraced Christianity, the great Theo- 
dosius was upon the tl^jone, soon united both empires 
under his sceptre, and had already made Orthodoxy 
the established faith of the realm. Now what a 
change ! Rome in ruins, and none to avenge her 
destruction ! The spirit of Paganism, so long crushed 
under imperial power, rose from the dust, and spoke 
of the days of Rome's primeval glory, before her 
energies had been broken by the tame creed and 
craven worship of the crucified Nazarene. The old 
philosophy allied itself with the old superstition, and 
both croaked like birds of ill omen in the fearful 
storm. The Pagan gods seemed to be avenging the 
desecration of their altars, and to threaten general 
ruin, unless their temples were rebuilt. At this time, 
immediately after the siege of Rome by Alaric, Augus- 
tine conceived the plan of his great work of vindi- 
cating the kingdom of Christ against the kingdoms of 
the world. Christian civilization against Pagan domi- 
nation. Gibbon began his history when seated among 
the ruins of the capital, and " amused and exercised "^ 
3 



I 



50 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS, 

nearly twenty years of his life by a history unsur- 
passed for its brilUant genius and for its perverse 
spirit. The bishop of Hippo in his beautiful see upon 
the shore of the Mediterranean, surrounded by monu- 
ments of Roman greatness, as he heard of the first 
shock of the power that was to make of the Roman 
empire a ruin, conceived a sublimer work, and devoted 
nearly as many years to its completion, with a learn- 
ing more vast, (considering his age,) with a mind 
more lofty, a spirit far more pure. He wrote not in 
the elegant ease of a Lausanne retirement, but in the 
midst of pressing cares. Viewed even from this 
present age, there is good reason to regard the work 
of the great Christian theologian of the fifth century 
as proving him a better student of mankind, a truer 
prophet of the future, than the great skeptical his- 
torian of the eighteenth century. His work was not 
on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but 
the Rise and Fall of Paganism and the rise and 
triumph of the City of God. It has justly been called 
"the funeral oration of the ancient society, the gratu- 
latory panegyric on the birth of the new." The best 
historians of the nineteenth century honor the spirit 
and the views of Augustine more than those of Gib- 
bon. Even in France, the land Avhich Gibbon 
so admired, and which at his death he left so rife 
with infidelity, the leading historians rebuke the folly 
that would dismiss Christianity with a sneer ; Michelet 
and Guizot, with a genius as brilhant and with a 
learning quite as extended as his, w^ith a creed, too, 
quite as litttle tolerant of Jesuilical cunning and 
priestly arrogance, write of former ages with a reve- 



THE CITY OF GOD. 51 

rence for religion that some have deemed too super- 
stitious, and in their views of the stabihty of society 
and the foundations of human welfare, and the course 
of Divine Providence, agree far more with the author 
of the City of God than with the writer of the Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

In the second book of his Retractations Augustine 
thus speaks of the plan he had in view in writing his 
chief work, after having alluded to the circumstances 
which moved him to undertake the task. 

'• This great work upon the City of God is at last 
finished, in twenty-two books. The first five of which 
refute those who maintain that the worship of many 
gods, as held by the Pagans, is essential to the pros- 
perity of human affairs, and who contend that calami- 
ties arise and abound when this worship is prohibited. 
The five following books are directed against those 
who grant that these calamities never have failed and 
never will fail to happen to mortal men, and will vary 
in magnitude according to times, places and persons ; 
but who still assert that the worship of many gods by 
sacrificial rites is of use in respect to the life beyond 
the grave. Thus in ten books these two idle opinions, 
so hostile to the Christian religion, are refuted. But 
lest we may be accused of attacking other persons 
while we advance nothing positive on our own part, 
the remaining twelve books are devoted to this pur- 
pose. Although wherever there is need, we assert our 
own views in the first ten, and refute our opponents 
in the last twelve books. Of these twelve books, the 
first four contain the origin of the two kingdoms, one 
of which is of God, the other of this world ; the second 



52 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

four contain the course or progress of the two : the 
third and last four, the true issue of both. Thus 
although the twenty-two books are written upon both 
cities, yet they have taken their title from the better 
one, so that they are called, ' De Civitate Dei.' " 

We follow the usual rendering of the name and 
call it City of God, although State or Kingdom of 
God would be a more appropriate title. 

Such was the stupendous work to which Augustine 
gave the maturity of his years and the whole force of 
his talents and attainments. It is an attempt at a 
philosophy of history upon Christian principles. Some 
have compared it to Plato's Republic, and Schlegel, 
has thought its plan to have been suggested by 
Plato's work. If so, the Christian shows no little 
advantage over the Greek. Both start from the 
highest principles of right in the abstract, but Plato 
utterly nullifies them by his absurd ideas of the com- 
munity of women, equality of conditions, military 
education of women, death of unruly children, pro-i 
hibition of private property, false distinctions of merit. 
Augustine, besides enforcing his lofty principles by 
divine sanctions, connects them with the Christian 
scheme of civilization, and, in spite of his gloomy dog- 
mas and vain superstitions, advocates those great 
measures of civilized society, which prove indeed that 
"between the ancient and the modern world, the 
Gospel intervenes." Plato may have erred in the plan 
of his Republic* from lack of constructive power in 

* The writer is well aware that some commentators upon Plato 
have denied that the " Republic " of this philosopher was intended 
to be a political work, or to give au ideal of social organization. 



I 



THE CITY OF GOD. 53 

carrying out his transcendental ideas, but however 
this may be, he more lacked the great Christian facts, 
and his scheme hence falls far below that of the much 
less original genius now before us. But we must not 
continue this parallel, nor say more in detail of the 
City of God. In a word, the writer compares the 
Pagan with the Christian civiHzation, both in refer- 
ence to this world and the world to come ; he describes 
the moral abominations and deadly superstitions of 
Heathenism ; strips off the mask from military glory ; 
reveals the hollowness of heathen philosophy; shows 
the power of Christianity in softening the very bar- 
barians whose inroads were so alarming ; and closes 
with a glowing description of the kingdom of God, or 
the true Church of the faithful, from its rise in Eden 
to its glorious consummation in the resurrection of the 
saints. The treatise is a noble one, not indeed with- 
out its defects, but far in advance of his age, and so 
far as true catholicity is concerned, far in advance of 
much of the theology of our own day. It seems to 
anticipate some of the results of modern science, as 
for example, in the hints concerning the days of the 
creation. It seems to us altogether in advance of that 
formalism of our time, which limits the power of 
Christianity so entirely to an official priesthood and 
their rites. It shows no trace of Popery as a hier- 
archical despotism. Its author evidently little dreamed 
that, following out the policy of his master Ambrose, 
Leo and the two Gregories would make such a 
despotism of the City of God, and Hildebrand, Gregory 

Neither Rousseau, nor Professor Tayler Lewis has been able to 
substantiate this theory. 



54 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

YII., would lord it over God's people with more than 
a Caesar's pride. Even comparing Augustine's work 
with that recent production that almost adopts its 
name, Maurice's "Kingdom of Christ," we must say, 
that much as we admire the abihty and many of the 
ideas and sentiments of the latter, the tone of the 
English presbyter is altogether more hierarchical than 
that of the African bishop. 

We can say no more of Augustine's works. We 
have chosen to speak of the three that best represent 
the different phases of his mind, and show him as the 
man, the theologian, the philosopher. We have not 
spoken of his sermons or his letters, both of which 
have been preserved in considerable numbers, because 
they are not essential to a knowledge of the writer's 
genius. His sermons are not remarkable for thought 
or eloquence, although those of them that are occupied 
with expositions of Scripture, such as the Homilies on 
the Gospels, which fill a volume of the Oxford Library, 
shed much light on the common method of interpret- 
ing Scripture, and have considerable intrinsic value in 
spite of their allegorizing character. His letters deal 
more frequently with subjects than persons, and have 
not much of the epistolary charm, although there are 
exceptions. 

The editions that we have consulted are probably 
the most important of the many that have appeared, 
and their very dates and editors are interesting and 
suggestive, whether we consider the edition of Eras- 
mus, (1528-29,) the earliest that aimed to be complete, 
that of the Louvaine theologians, among whom Jan- 
senius received his education and undoubtedly took 



HIS INTELLECTc 55 

his direction (1577,) or that of the Benedictines (1679- 
1700,) which now re-appears in such beauty more 
than a century and a half after its first pubhcation 
(1836-9.) 

What shall we say of Augustine on the whole? 
Shall we dismiss his mighty name with common-place 
reflections on his superstitions, or vulgar sneers at his 
dogmas, or fulsome eulogies of his saintly holiness and 
infallible judgment? Not so. Let us try to view 
him fairly. He is not one of the men whom we have 
been in tfie habit of admiring. The more reason then 
for estimating him justly. 

As to intellect, he evidently had great acuteness and 
great breadth. Had not his mind been so absorbed 
by his favorite doctrines of the total depravity and 
moral inability of man and the overwhelming power 
of God, and so inflamed, alike by personal experience 
and controversial opposition, with zeal for his peculiar 
creed, he might perhaps have ranked among the sages 
of philosoph}^, and the Church w^ould have lost a 
theologian she could not well have spared. Bold sys- 
tems of philosophy might have been constructed from 
some of his favorite ideas. The doctrine which 
Leroux, the ^' last word" of French philosophy, has 
set forth so vauntingly concerning the solidarity of the 
human race, and which a metaphysical neophyte of 
the Romish Church among us has declared to be the 
cause of his conversion and the basis of true divinity, 
is all implied in Augustine's dogma of the union of all 
men in Adam as the federal head. We are not sorry 
that he did not rest in philosophic abstractions, prone 
lo them though he was. Had he done thus, he would 



56 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

not have wielded the power needed in liis age, for 
pliilosophical theories are very pliant, and starting- 
from the i-ame ideal theory, one man worships God in 
his own soul with dreamy reverie, whilst another 
adores ihe Eternal Spirit in rites and temples, thrones 
and priesthoods ; and the most radical Democracy 
and uncompromising Popery w^ear the same tran 
scendental lures, according as the mist clouds rest 
upon the valley or wreath the mountain-top. 

Yet we are glad that Augustine's faith was accom- 
panied hy such strong tendencies to philosophical 
view^s. Even imder his devotional musings, we some- 
times ohserve a tendency towards universal ideas and 
broad analogies, that remind us now of a Bi:^tler w^ith 
bis sober wisdom, and now of a Swedenhorg with 
his spiritual correspondencies. His intellect was em- 
inently deductive more than inductive, more proiie to 
trace principles to their conclusions than to observe 
facts with the view of bringing them within the range 
of principles. He w^as ready to carry out an idea 
wherever it would lead him, without due regard to 
collateral truths, and thus, as in his views of the doom 
of unbaptized children, his logic drove him to con- 
clusions from which his heart revolted. As a theo- 
logian of deductive intellect, he reminds us of his 
great disciple, Jonathan Edwards, whilst as uniting 
mtellectual subtlety with devotional fervor, he re- 
sembles Richard Baxter, that most voluminous of 
writers and most disinterested of men. Yet Augus- 
tine show^s much inductive power, especially in his 
survey of sacred science in his work on Christian 
doctrine, and in his view of civilization in the City 



HIS CHARACTER. 57 

of God. Reading" these, one is at least reminded of 
the "Novum Organum" and the "Advancement of 
Learning," and may perhaps hesitate to call him the 
Bacon of an age rude in science and wanting in true 
method. 

He was not destitute of imagination, but he rarely 
shows this in its common forms, because he dwelt so 
much in the region of general truths, that his imagi- 
nation deals almost exclusively with them, and not 
with objects in the world of nature or of art, whether 
scenes, characters, or persons. Yet when reading his 
Confessions, as when reading Edwards' Diary, we 
almost say^ here is a man who would have been a 
great poet had he not been a great theologian. 

Practically, he was a man of strong sense. As a 
bishop he ruled with great moderation, not stretching 
his prerogative far, but consulting the will of the ma- 
jority in liis official acts and careful to follow the 
customs of the church. He gave judicious advice to 
those who consulted him. His clergy asked him to 
advise them what to do upon the approach of the 
barbarians. Remain at your posts if your people re- 
main, even if it be to die with them ; leave your posts 
if your people leave, and do not vainly brave the 
pains of martyrdom ; — was the spirit of his reply. 
Advocate as he was of celibacy and the retired life, 
he dissuaded the Roman General, Boniface, from 
renouncing the world and entering the monastery. 
Augustine advised him to serve God in his present 
vocation, and consecrate his miUtary skill to the de- 
fence of Christendom against the barbarians. Perhaps 
this advice showed Augustine's knowledge of human 
3* 



58 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

nature, as well as his idea of duty. The Roman who 
was so agonized by the loss of his wife as to forswear 
the world, soon forgot his grief in another connection, 
and needed still sterner counsel from his adviser to 
keep him within the limits of morality, and afterwards 
to reclaim him from treason. 

It is hard to estimate soberly a mind so entirely 
pervaded by enthusiastic feeling, a head of iron with 
a heart of flame. He was a man of great affections, 
engrossed by a prostrate reverence, tempered not a 
little sweetly by gentle charity. The crabbed Jerome 
did not provoke his anger, nor did his controversies 
with the Manicheans and Pelagians move him to 
forget the distinction between opinions and character, 
and to malign the men in opposing their doctrines. 
He was a strict moralist, and in advance of the com- 
mon Jesuitism of his age, which permitted the use of 
falsehood for promoting the good of the Church and 
the glory of God. 

As to force of will, he does not rank among the 
greatest of his order, except in reference to con- 
centration of thought. In executive energ}^ he falls 
below Ambrose, his spiritual father, and Luther and 
Knox, his spiritual children. He does not seem to 
have had great power in personal address, or great 
daring in professional enterprise. Thought rather 
than action was his domain. Hence perhaps the 
relative quiet of his latter years. He wrote a Treatise 
upon Preaching, — the last book of his work on the 
Christian Doctrine, — and gives some anecdotes of the 
success of his own appeals. But his sermons, though 
carefully worded, are generally very short, and, as 



HIS PERSONAL HABITS. 59 

before hinted, common place, and prove either his 
little gift for the pulpit, or else his low sense of the 
capacities of his audience. Even when treating such 
themes as his favorite Paul, he does not enter into the 
depths of his subject, nor speak as from the affluence 
of so profound an experience. Yet he was evidently 
an attentive pastor, earnest in his labors, very discreet, 
generally mild and charitable, and equall}^ free from 
tame plodding and fanatical excess. Many deep think- 
ers have been indifferent preachers. 

His writings give us many glimpses of his personal 
character, and he has made a^full statement of his per- 
sonal failings, which he classes under the three heads 
of the " lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the 
pride of life." Under the first head, he confesses a 
leaning towards the pleasures of music and especially 
of the table, although we learn from Possidius, that he 
was quite abstemious and more generous to his guests 
than to himself; under the second, he allows that he 
has an over-curiosity in explaining things his own 
way, a tendency which few will dispute ; under the 
third head, he accuses himself of some intellectual 
pride alike in his own labors and his view of God's 
works. 

As to his way of life, the biography by Possidius is 
the best light, execrable as the Latinity is. The 
sketch there given w^ould not be much out of the way, 
if transferred to our latitude and incorporated into the 
biography of some of our grave old Puritan divines, 
so far as manners and habits are concerned. One fact 
recorded, is quite amusing. Augustine was not fond 
of scandal, and declared his opposition to it in two 



60 AUGUSTINE AND HTS WORKS. 

Latin verses written upon his table ; a circumstance 
which, with the alleged difficulty of enforcing his de- 
sires upon his clerical guests, proves that ministers 
were then mortal, and that a little gossip was not 
deemed unseasonable at every bishop's table. He in- 
sisted upon leaving the room if his wishes in this re- 
spect were violated, and sometimes did so and retired to 
his chamber. The lines alluded to were these : — 

" Quisquis amat dictis absentmii rodere vifam, 
Hanc meusam indignam noverit esse sibi." 

In plain English, " Whoever takes pleasure in abusing 
the absent, should know that this table is no place 
for him." His style of living was moderate, free from 
both extremes. He used w^ine sparingly, and did not, 
like many ascetics, renounce animal food. In dress 
he observed the same moderation. 

In regard to Augustine's scholarship, Erasmus 
seems to us to give the best idea of it, in his preface to 
the edition of Basle, and in occasional letters. Augus- 
tine was evidently not so remarkable for finished 
scholarship as for extensive information and bold 
thought. He was little familiar Avith Greek, and not 
at all WMth Hebrew, and although well versed in Latin 
literature, he was far below Jerome as a master of 
Latin composition; as well he might be, born and 
educated as he was in a rude province, whilst Jerome 
received his culture in the bosom of Roman refine- 
ment. Erasmus says, that one page of Origen will 
tell him more of Greek philosophy than ten of Augus- 
tine. Yet Augustine was evidently acquainted with 
the leading productiojis of the Greek mind. He pro- 



HIS THEOLOGY. 61 

bably gained most of his knowledge from translations- 
He speaks much of Plalo and with favor, less of Aris- 
totle and with qualified praise : whilst of the great 
Alexandrian divines, Clement and Origen, he says, we 
believe, nothing of the former, and of the latter no- 
thing that is laudatory. Still through his master, Am- 
brose, he felt more of the force of the great Origen's 
Platonizing theology than he was aware of or willing 
to confess. When we say that he was ready at ex- 
tempore speaking, and many of his published writings 
were taken down from viva voce addresses, we ascribe 
to him an important talent, and give a reason for 
judging charitably the harshness of some of his pages 
as to style. 

In reference to the question at issue between the 
Oxford party and the Evangelicals in the present con- 
troversy regarding the Fathers, the position of Augus- 
tine is somewhat equivocal. Both claim him in the 
main, arid both are afraid of something in his ways. 
The Churchman is afraid of his Puritan doctrines of 
sin and conversion ; the Evangehcal is afraid of his 
superstitious formalism: whilst the one praises his 
faithful Churchmanship, and the other his strict Evan- 
gelism. The works referred to in our former article 
show this mingled feeling. Taylor lauds Augustine's 
essential doctrines, and condemns his superstitious 
forms. Unhke Joseph Milner, who thinks Augustine 
the true light of a dark age, Taylor regards him as 
having given his influence to the worst practises of 
priestcraft, such as celibacy, saint-worship, purgatory, 
relics, and the whole train of similar abominations. 
We are perfectly ready to agree with Mr. Taylor as to 



055 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

the effect of the Nicene ideas of woman and ceUbacy 
in promoting a morbid creed, temper and ritual. Au- 
gustine himself, as Possidius and his own writings de- 
clare, held very extreme views regarding married life, 
and was very reluctant to mingle at all in female so- 
ciety. Had he associated more with women and chil- 
dren, or known the discipline of a true home, some 
features of his theology might have been spared the 
world. But Mr. Taylor probably refers to other 
points than ourselves in his censures. 

These are strange words for a champion of modern 
Calvinism to apply to thegreatprogenitor of his creed: 

"Augustine, the hope, the last hope of his limes, 
joined hands with the besotted bigots around him, who 
would listen to no reproofs; he raised his voice among 
the most intemperate to drown remonstrance. Super- 
stition and spiritual despotism, illusion, knavery, and 
abject formalism, received a new warrant from the 
high seat of influence which he occupied ; the church 
drove its chariot with mad haste down the steep, and 
thenceforward nothing marks its history but blas- 
phemy, idolatry and blood ! The popery which even 
now is gathering over our heavens in all quarters, is 
little else than the digested superstition which the 
good Augustine set forward in his day." 

These words are undoubtedly true so far as they re- 
fer to errors and superstitions embedded in Augustine's 
works, and which might be made to palliate results 
like those specified, but the passage cited is not fair as 
an exposition of Augustine's own spirit and tendency. 
He was surrounded by formal superstitions, and 
approved not a few evil customs, but these had not 



HIS ALLEGED SUPERSTITION. 63 

mastered his own soul. Unconsciously perhaps to 
Augustine, the great conflict was going on in his mind, 
which was afterwards to be waged so fiercely and with 
such various results— the controversy still going on 
between faith and formalism — "an eagle and a ser- 
pent wreathed in fight." In his soul, the eagle had 
not lost the mastery. 

" A shaft of light upon its wings descended, 
And every golden feather gleamed therein — 
Feather and scale inextricably blended. 
The serpent's mail'd and many colored skin 
Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within 
By many a swoln and knotted fold, and high 
And far, the neck, receding lithe and thin, 
Sustained a crested head, which warily 
Shifted and glanced before the eagle's steadfast eye." 

Whether eagle or serpent shall finally conquer, Mr. 
Taylor of course believes, will be decided by the issue 
of the present controversy. 

The Oxford scholars are careful, evidently, not to 
select Augustine's more decided predestinarian works 
for the press. They show their estimate of him by 
printing his Confessions and Homilies. We prefer to 
give their judgment of his worth in these lines from 
Williams's "Cathedral," to extracting any passages 
from their prefaces or notes. The sonnet is no bad 
summary of the life portrayed. 

*' As when the sun hath climbed a cloudy mass, 
And looks at noon on some cathedral dim, 
Each limb, each fold in the translucent glass 
Breaks into hues of radiant seraphim ; 

So, sainted Bishop! in the lettered store 

Which Btill enfolds thy spirit, fled from sight, 



64 AUGUSTINE AND HIS WORKS. 

Oomment, Prayer, Homily, or learned lore, 
Christ bathes each part with his transforming light. 

Late risen ia thee. Thence all is eloquent 

With flowing sweetness ; o'er each I'ising pause 

Thou buildst in untired strength ; through all is sent 
The word, pleading for his most righteous laws. 

For thy sick soul, by baptism's seal relieved, 

Deep in her brackish founts the healing Cross received." 

We must deal more gently than otherwise with the 
last two lines, since Augustine himself was an advo- 
cate of baptismal regeneration. Evidently neither 
Evangehcals nor High-churchmen can make the 
ancient saint wholly subservient to their minds. 

Not a few of our readers will not regret the inabili- 
ty of either party to make sectarian capital of so 
great a name, and will be more eager to learn the les- 
sons taught by his life. They will require little aid 
to lead them to appreciate the double lesson convey- 
ed; — the danger of allowing one favorite notion to 
master the mind, and of suffering the pride of logical 
consistency to enslave the intuitions of the reason, 
the undefinable instincts of our moral nature, to any 
abstract formula, whether of philosophy or theology : 
on the other hand, the power of a strong faith in the 
revealed God, the peace of a soul assured of forgive- 
ness, resting in the Divine will^ and giving all its ener- 
gies to the good of man and the advancement of the 
Divine kingdom. Herein was thy chief glory, Augus- 
tine, heart of flame ! an absorbing faith and love, 
born of a deep personal experience, and never 
quenched or echpsed by strifes, dogmas or forms. 
Burn and shine forever in that golden candle-stick in 



HIS TRUE PLACE. 65 

which not one church, but all Christians have exalted 
thy memory ! 

Divide the strong minds of Chistendom into fom" 
chief classes, according- to their affinity with the lead- 
ing-Apostles, and the principal tendencies of religion, — 
with Peter in his ecclesiastical zeal, John in his 
devout contemplation, James with his ethical exact- 
ness, and Paul, the late convert, with his dialectical 
force and systematic divinity ; Augustine deserves a 
rank next to Paul among the dialecticians of the 
Church. Next to the Apostle of the Gentiles, he is 
leader of the illustrious band, who have meditated on 
sin and its remedy with the power of great intellect 
and the riches of deep experience, until their very 
logic has burned with eloquence and they have become 
the chief apostles of the doctrines most mighty in 
conversion. He is not of the stamp of Cyprian and 
Ambrose and Hildebrand, nor of Origen and Chry- 
sostom and Fenelon, nor of Pelagius and Butler and 
Paley ; it is enough to say, that as a thinker he leads 
in the path where Calvin. Pascal, Leighton, Edwards, 
Chalmers have followed, whilst in respect to Chris- 
tian experience he stands foremost among the Luthers 
and Bunyans of the Church, 

1846. 



III. 

CHRYSOSTOM AND THE ANCIENT 
PULPIT. 



In some quarters, the passion for Patristic lore has 
been carried so far as to become an infirmity, and 
more than once of late, Milton's strong rebuke has 
been quoted by the zealous antagonists of tradition: 
"V^hatever time or the heedless hand of blind chance 
hath drawn from old to this present, in her huge 
drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shell or shrubs, 
unpicked, unchosen, these are the Fathers." Allow 
that the drag-net has brought up much worthless 
trash, we will not complain so long as it "hatii drawn 
from old to this present" one prize laden with such 
precious matter as the works of the golden-mouthed 
John of Antioch and Constantinople. He was the 
most briUiant preacher of the ancient church in its 
palmy days, a man whose life will always have the 

* Art. II. 1. Sancti Patris nos'di Joannis Chrysostomi Opera 
Omnia. Opera et Studio D. Bernardi de Montfaucon. Editio 
altera, emendata et a'lcta. Parisiis. 1839. 

2. Homilies of St. Chrysosl.om. Translated by Members of the 
English Church. Oxford. 1839-44. 9 vols, Svo. 



HIS EULOGISTS. 67 

interest of a romance, and whose eloquence, at once 
so characteristic in its tone and so universal in its 
spirit, must have a charm and power for every age. 
In looking over the many books that have been 
written upon Chrysostom, the reader is stiuck with the 
almost constant strain of eulogium, and is fearful that 
the just limits of history have been overstepped, and 
that the brilliant aureola of the saint has bhnded the 
eye to the features of the man. By popes and saints 
he has been called "Interpreter of the secrets of God," 
— " The sun of the whole universe," — " The lamp of 
virtue," — "Brightest star of the earth." The polished 
and learned Erasmus, too judicious to use such ful- 
some phrases, gives Chrysostom far more honorable 
praise ; after lauding his boldness, charity and wisdom, 
he speaks of the eloquence that could impart " sweet- 
ness to things naturally bitter, and make one love 
even his rebukes, whilst the flatteries of other men 
are intolerable." Since the Protestant Reformation, 
Papists and Reformers have vied with each other in 
doing honor to this saint. In the beginning of the 
seventeenth century, Sir Henry Savile devoted a prince- 
ly fortune to a splendid edition of the original Greek 
from the press of Eton, and the Jesuit Fronte Ducseus 
at Paris, followed with an edition accompanied by a 
Latin version. In the early part of the last century, 
the Benedictine Montfaucon put forth the edition 
which has ever since been recognized by scholars as 
a classic, and which has recently been reprinted at 
Paris in a more convenient form, and with many 
valuable corrections. Availing ourselves of this re- 
print, with its rich notes and illustrations, and of the 



68 CHRYSOSTOM. 

learned work of the independent Neander,* we have 
ample materials for forming an opinion of the great 
preacher and his age. The beauty of the Paris 
edition cannot well be surpassed ; and the publishers 
of it deserve the more credit for their enterprise, as the 
first eleven parts were destroyed by fire in 1835, and 
the completion of the work was necessarily deferred 
two years beyond 1837, the time originally contem- 
plated. We owe not a little to the scholars of Oxford 
for the assistance derived from their translation of the 
most important of Chrysostom's homilies. The work 
which the English antiquarian, Bingham, projected 
more than a century ago, and Avhich Dr. Porter of 
Andover, began a few years since, is now going on 
under the auspices of a party then unknown. By 
such a labor, Puseyism may atone for not a few of 
its sins. 

We have said that Chrysostom lived in the palmy 
age of the ancient church. It was surely so, although 
not the purest. His ministry began in the reign of the 
Spaniard, Theodosius, to whom the church owed far 
more than to the wavering Constantine. By him the 
Roman empire was reunited, and. at the second gen- 
eral council, held in Constantinople, A. D. 381, one 
emperor and one creed seemed to rule the world. The 
church had come off triumphant in the struggle with 
the apostate Julian, who denied all her claims to au- 
thority, and with the fierce heretics who opposed her 
leading doctrines. Enjoying the patronage of the 

* Der Heilige Johannes Chrysostomus, und die Kirche besonders des 
Orients, in dessen Zeitalter. Von A. Neander, Dr. Berlin, 1821 — 22. 



HIS AGE. 69 

State, with creed, ritual, and government matured, in 
full possession of the riches of the Greek and Latin 
literature^ little dreaming of the barbaric darkness that 
was impending, the church showed her greatest bril- 
liancy just as her sun was going down. Four men 
were prominent above all others in that splendid age. 
The heroes of the great Athanasian struggle, Athana- 
sius, Basil, and Hilary had gone to their graves. Who 
was to take their place as defenders of the faith ? In 
Italy, the spirit that was afterwards to animate a 
Gregory the First, and a Hildebrand guided the mea- 
sures of Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, who wielded 
a crosier stronger than the sceptre of Theodosius. 
Across the Mediterranean, at Carthage, the young 
Augustine was teaching rhetoric to refractory pupils, 
w^hom in disgust he was soon to leave for Italy, where 
in Ambrose he found a teacher who led him as an 
humble convert to the foot of the cross. Turning to 
the East, we find that at Constantinople, the Roman 
monk Jerome, was pursuing his Greek studies under 
the direction of the venerable Gregory, and preparing 
himself for the solitude of Bethlehem, where he be- 
came the great scholar of his time. John of Antioch 
had just left his hermitage in the mountains,, and en- 
tered upon the ministry in the city of his birth. These 
four men were the chief lights of their time, shining 
severally as the prelate, the theologian, the scholar, 
and the preacher of their age. Each of them will re- 
pay a careful study of his life and labors. Our task 
is now with the most attractive of them all, 

John of Antioch, surnamed two centuries after his 
death, Chrysostom^ or ''Mouth of Gold," was placed 



70 CHRYSOSTOM. 

by circumstances at an earty period of his life in a 
school most favorable to the development of his ora- 
torical powers. He passed the first twenty-seven 
years of his life at Antioch, where a picture of the 
whole world was before him in its heterogeneous col- 
lection of men. manners, and creeds. The Roman 
capital of Asia, with its two hundred thousand inhabi- 
tants, was at once Greek, Roman, and Oriental, Pa- 
gan, Jewish, and Christian. It exhibited all the 
phases of culture and condition, the greatest luxury 
and the most squalid poverty, the highest refinement 
and the grossest brutality, the most ascetic devotion 
and the most complete worldhness. For centuries after 
the apostles established a church there, and believers 
were there first called Christians, the Gospel had been 
struggUng for mastery over the worship of Baal and 
Astarte, Apollo and Venus. Now Antioch was nomi- 
nally Christian. Still the church and the theatre 
were rivals, whilst pleasure and ambition bore such 
sway, that religion had little place in the hearts of the 
leading men, and found its best votaries among de- 
voted women, and the fervent recluses sheltered in 
the monasteries and hermitages of the neighboring 
mountains. 

Chrysostom saw every aspect of life, manners, and 
belief at Antioch. It was his school, and he learned 
all its lessons faithfully. His mother, who was left a 
widow at twenty years of age, devoted herself to his 
education, and although an earnest Christian, and 
desiring nothing for her son so much as a place in 
the church, procured for him the most hberal means 
of instruction, and conscientiously left him to the 



HIS INTELLECT. 71 

choice of his own profession. His teacher of rhetoric 
was the famous Libanius, whom Juhan admired, and 
Gibbon has lauded as the last glory of expiiing- pagan- 
ism. His teacher of philosophy was Andiogathias, 
probably a Platonist. Under these men, he was 
taught to see the ancient forms of religion and morals 
under their most favorable aspects, and thus to under- 
stand the systems which he afterwards labored so 
eloquently to refute. His oratorical powers were so 
conspicuous that he was led to prepare for the bar, 
and Libanius had no small expectations of his pupil's 
renown in the courts of law, as well as in the schools 
of pagan philosophy. But his mother's Bible, with 
her devoted spirit, had more power than the sophist's 
enticements. The youth was evidently disgusted 
wilh the practice of the law at Antioch, as others have 
been in cities more decidedly Christian. He cjuitted 
this profession, and turned to the study of theology, 
first under the direction of the bishop Meietius, and 
afterwards by himself, in his mother's house. Si ill, 
his course of life was not at first very pure, not so 
much so even as that of some of his associates ; but 
he soon abandoned his youthful follies, and his devo- 
tion to the church became so marked as to draw upon 
him the attention of the clergy, and to lead them to 
press upon him the office of bishop. But he was op- 
pressed with a sense of his own un worthiness, and 
panted for retirement : and at last the death of his 
mother, combined with his indignation at the tyranny 
of the government, and the course of his religious con- 
victions, led him to go out into the neighboring 



72 CHRYSOSTOM. 

mountains, and there to commune with God and his 
own soul. 

This was no inappropriate education for a preacher. 
Six years of retirement and study, after twenty-seven 
years of hfe m a tumuhuous city ! Of these six years, 
four were spent under capable instructors in a 
monastery, and two in the sohtude of a cave. 
Whether driven by the ill health induced by his 
ascetic practices, or by convictions of duty drawn 
from the Bible, which he never allowed to be laid 
aside for monkish legends, he returned to the city in 
the year 380, and was welcomed as a messenger from 
God to the church. Still he preferi'ed privac}^ of life, 
and declined the honors which were offered him. 
For six years more he shrunk back from the position 
which his powers of eloquence entitled him to hold, 
and was content with fulfiling devotedly tlie lowest 
offices of the Christian ministry. He did not preach 
until his fortieth year. There is little reason to regret 
that the abilities of Chrysostom were so long in ripe- 
ning ; the fact explains his inexhaustible resources. 
He could preach every day, for weeks, without flagging 
in spirit or wanting material. He drew from a full 
fountain, unlike the many who are sorely tried by at- 
tempting to draw from cisterns that hold little or no 
water. 

For twelve years he was the glory of the pulpit of 
Antioch. Here he produced his most valuable works, 
having sufficient leisure for study and sufficient ex- 
citement for his oratory. No productions of Christian 
antiquity have so much practical value now as his 
expository homilies. No one among his contempo- 



AT ANTIOCH. 73 

aries held a position so enviable as his during this 
period. He'preached in the church which the apostles 
had founded, and from which they sent forth their 
missionary expeditions that had converted the world. 
The Holy Land was near enough to give vividness to 
the pictures of its hallowed scenes and characters, yet 
distant enough to awaken the imagination, and lend 
the enchantment that distance gives. Christians 
formed the principal part of the population of the city; 
yet there was enough of pagan superstition and 
skeptical philosophy to give topics for the preacher's 
varied eloquence, to inflame his own zeal, and to win 
the attention of his hearers. Even the excitable and 
pleasure-loving multitude presented no unfavorable 
materials for his glowing eloquence to work upon. 
Antioch turned from its pleasures and strifes, its ban- 
quets and theatres, to listen to this vehement de- 
nouncer of popular sins, and the fascinating advocate 
of piety and charity. And when, in the year 387, 
ruin threatened her palaces and people, when Theo- 
dosius, outraged by resistance to his assessments and 
by indignity offered to the statues of himself and his 
queen, vowed vengeance against the city, the genius 
of the orator appeared more brilliant than ever. 
Chrysostom preached incessantly during the season of 
panic. He worked into his discourses all the imagery 
that the terrified city presented. Every thing was 
made to preach, and to testify of the evil of sin and 
the terrors of the judgment. The flight of the pagan 
teachers and the philosophical lecturers, the brave con- 
stancy of the Christians, and the ready aid of the 
monks, who thronged to the city from the neighbor- 
4 



74 CHRYSOSTOM. 

ing mountains to warn the sinful and cheer the faith- 
ful, — all joined to swell the praises of the Gospel, and 
to appeal to the consciences of the indifferent. And 
when, finally, the anger of Theodosius, after it had 
brought heavy inflictions upon Antioch, was appeased 
by a special delegation headed by the bishop Flavian, 
the preacher bade the people look above the will of 
the emperor to that august power which had won the 
monarch to the faith, and subdued him to a humanity 
that befitted its doctrines of forgiveness and love. 

It had been better for the orators peace, if he had 
remained at Antioch, devoting himself to the pulpit, 
and leaving the cares of episcopal rule to heads con- 
stituted differently from his own. But the gain to his 
temporal welfare would have involved the loss of a 
martyr's crown. The see of Constantinople — next to 
that of Rome, the proudest office in the church — was 
va-cant. Ambitious aspirants without number clam- 
ored for the place. One who had never aspired to the 
honor was called to receive it. The fame of the 
preacher of Antioch had reached Constantinople, and 
the son of Theodosius, who was now on the throne, 
w^as induced by his prime minister, Eutropius, to call 
Chrysostom to the episcopal chair. Refusal was im- 
possible, and, in the year 398, the reluctant preacher 
w^as removed to his splendid charge, vainly hoping to 
cause the pure principles to which his life had been 
devoted to flourish in a city ruled by the intrigues of 
courtiers, priests, and women. Here every thing went 
wrong, except the bishop's own purpose and its neces- 
sary effect upon the true-hearted. He tried to reform 
the clergy, but they turned upon him with reproaches 



TRIALS AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 75 

for his dictatorial spirit and his meagre style of living". 
They ridiculed him for eating his scanty meals alone 
in a palace where banquets had been so common. 
He found the monks as little disposed as the regular 
clergy to relish the austerity of his principles and con- 
duct. They grasped at once at the honors of self- 
denial and the comforts of self indulgence. South 
himself could not have been more earnest and pithy 
than Chrysostom was in his rebuke of monkish preten- 
sions. The homily aimed at the dainty manners and 
assiduous gallantry of some who affected to be weary 
of the world will do very well as a picture of clerical or 
pietistic dandyism in any age. Such shafts, however, 
were not received as pleasantry, or submitted to as the 
wounds of a friend. The hypocritical monks hated 
the real ascetic. 

The women of the city, with Eudoxia at their head, 
who at first had been most desirous to hear the re- 
nowned preacher, and ready to deify him, changed 
their tone at once, when they found that he was as 
pointed in his rebukes as he was eloquent in his ap- 
peals, that he could talk " of hell to ears polite," and 
was fond of directing his denunciations against female 
vanities and sins. The empress, beautiful and vicious, 
enthusiastic in his praise at first, and glad to supply 
him with the means of establishing choirs and furnish- 
ing them with silver crucifixes, began to persecute him 
with deadly hate, when she found that he was bent 
upon reforming the prevalent manners, and that some 
of his discourses were regarded as coming home to her 
own royal conscience. Many of the bishops turned 
against him. Perhaps, in his zeal, he might have ex- 



76 . CHRYSOSTOM. 

ceeded the proper limits of his jurisdiction ; but others 
had done so before, and the evils against which he 
strove were of crying magnitude. A regular opposi- 
tion was organized against him, headed by that cold- 
blooded schemer, the despotic and avaricious Theophi- 
lus of Alexandria, a Bonner in temper, and a Bossuet 
in energy. By an informal synod Chrysostom was 
doomed to exile, and, though he protested against the 
hregularity of the proceedings, the love of peace in- 
duced him to leave the city, and take refuge on the 
opposite shore. 

The triumph of the empress and the Egyptian was 
short. Strange sounds were heard on the next night, 
and an earthquake shook the city. The superstitious 
people declared that it was the voice of God uttered in 
vengeance for his injured servant. Theophilus was 
confounded, and Eudoxia sank on her knees in terror 
and remorse. The exile was recalled with more than 
an imperial triumph. The whole city went out to 
meet him ; the Bosphorus was bridged with boats, and 
illuminated with torclies. Immediately upon his ar- 
rival, the preacher was hurried by the multitude to 
the church of the apostles, and found no rest until he 
had given the crowd his blessing and counsel in a 
short harangue. Soon afterwards he preached a more 
elaborate discourse upon glorying in tribulation. In 
both cases he speaks in a spirit of the most fervent 
gratitude and confident faith. 

But he had only two months' respite from persecu- 
tion. An alliance between him and the court govern- 
ed by Eudoxia could not continue long. His last 
remarkable sermon in Constantinople showed his 



FAREWELL TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 77 

fearless devotion, and though perhaps impohtic^it did 
not probably much accelerate his doom. A silver 
statue of the empress was set up before the senate- 
house, so near the church of St. Sophia, where he was 
officiating, that the tumultuous festivites, the songs, 
dances, and shouts of the multitude, interrupted the 
services of the worshippers in the church. The ser- 
mon of Chrysostom was very severe against such 
revelry, and every word of it was regarded by the 
empress as an attack upon herself. Again he was 
driven into exile, after a nominal trial before a synod 
of bishops. 

Neander gives an affecting account of his farewell 
to his people, on this occasion. When he found that 
the soldiers of the fickle Arcadius were upon his track, 
and that to remain with his people was to endanger 
their lives as well as his own, he consented to go 
away, 

" He called his bishops around him, for the last time 
in the church, knelt with them and prayed, saying, at 
the close, 'Farewell to the angel of this church.' 
Then he went into the sacristy, embraced some of the 
bishops with tears, and bade them a touching adieu. 
He then proceeded to the chapel or baptistery, and 
here met the devoted women, deaconesses, who by 
their wealth had so often sustained him in his expen- 
sive charities and ecclesiastical enterprises, and said to 
them : ' Come, my daughters, and hear me. The end 
is at hand, I see clearly; I have finished my course, 
and perhaps you will never see me more. My advice 
to you is this ; let none of you remit in the least your 
labor of love for the church, and whoever without 



78 CHRYSOSTOM. 

self-s^king or ambition is unanimously chosen bishop 
after me, follow him as you have followed John, as the 
church cannot remain without a bishop. God, in his 
mercy, bless you ; remember me in your prayers.' 
Without returning to take leave of the bishops, he 
went to the east side of the church, having caused his 
mule to be brought up to the west door, so as to draw 
the attention of the multitude thither, and took his de- 
parture. Thus he went out unobserved, and quietly 
surrendered himself to the guard, who conducted him 
to the harbor, where he embarked in a small vessel 
for Bithynia. This was on the 9th of June, 404." 

Still his influence did not cease, but by his letters 
and preaching he produced such an effect upon the 
churches, that he was as much honored and feared as 
when on the patriarchal throne. This influence 
seemed dangerous to the government, and the empress 
was resolved that he should be crushed. He was 
driven from place to place, under great exposure, and 
at last died in Pontus, in the year 407, while on a 
forced journey towards the remotest wilds of Colchis, 
the extreme limits of the Roman empire. When it 
appeared that he could go no farther, he begged the 
soldiers to carry him to a neighboring chapel, where, 
calling for white robes, he put them on, and, after he 
had partaken of the sacrament, and offered prayer 
ending with his usual doxology. " Glory to God for all 
things," he breathed his last. The light of the Chris- 
tian pulpit vanished from the world. 

The defects in Chrysostom's character were obvious, 
but not of great importance. He may have been, as 
the historian Socrates implies, rather choleric by na- 



I 



HIS DEFECTS. 79 

ture, somewhat hasty and dictatorial in temper, and 
too severe in his ascetic habits and his frequent de- 
mands for fasting and self-crucifixion. His monkish 
habits had given a little irritableness and acidity to 
an unquestionable evangelical zeal. But the chief 
sources of his troubles lay more deeply in his char- 
acter. He was not fitted for a prelate's position in 
troublous times. He was great in his principles, but 
somewhat feeble in his measures. The former he de- 
rived from the Bible and his own soul ; for the latter 
he trusted too much to his deacon, Serapion, who was 
a rash and unprincipled adviser. But even if he had 
possessed the requisite talents for a post of command, 
his views of Christianity would have been much in 
the way of his success. Though a lover of the 
church and its ritual, and free from reproach as to the 
main principles of his creed, he preached boldly and 
spiritually, and the whole genius of his ministration 
was directly opposed to the prevalent priestcraft and 
formalism. Isaac Taylor has, indeed, collected nu- 
merous passages of his works to show his exaggerated 
views of the importance of rites and relics, and pray- 
ers to saints and martyrs. But a man like Chrysos- 
tom must be Judged by his leading purpose, not by his 
incidental extravagances either of rhetoric or of opin- 
ion. He could not be a very benighted formalist, so 
long as he believed and so eloquently preached, that 
the strength of the church is in the purity of its mem- 
bers, and that loss of the love of God is the bitterest 
infliction in hell. 

In our hasty glance at Chrysostom's life, we have 
not forgotten that we are writing for a work devoted 



80 CHRYSOSTOM. 

to literature rather than theology, and^we have there- 
foie been very chary in the use of the rich materials 
furnished by the volumes before us. . We must keep 
this thought still more in mind as we turn to speak of 
the orator's genius and works. 

Chrysostom was evidently a man of quick percep- 
tions, strong common sense, remarkable power of 
comparison, strict conscientiousness, fervent affections, 
exuberant fancy, and a powerful imagination. He 
was not a great analytic thinker, and although well 
informed on philosophical subjects, he had little taste 
for abstractions. His great power lies in the number 
and richness of his illustrations. Every truth is co- 
vered, sometimes burdened, with imagery. Every 
duty is brought home to particular cases and con- 
sciences. He does not disdain the simplest compari- 
sons that will help him in his work, and sometimes 
uses a redundancy of gorgeous figures, as if nature 
were taking her revenge on the ascetic for his con- 
tempt of her riches, and kindling in his literary taste 
a passion for splendor that was so sternly denied in 
his way of life. More frequently, however, he pre- 
sents common truths in plain language, with the most 
obvious illustrations. He had evidently been a con- 
stant observer of nature, as well as a close student of 
the Bible. He was alike famiUar with the beauties 
and the adaptations of creation, and, fond as he is of 
discoursing floridly of roses and lilies, the sea, moun- 
tains, and stars, he sometimes enters into minute 
statements of natural laws and of the wonderful anato- 
my of the human frame, that almost make us believe 
that we are reading an Oriental version of Paley, in 



HIS PREACHING. 81 

spite of the occasional mistakes in the principles of 
science. The force and frequency with which he in- 
troduces passages of Scripture, or alludes to the per- 
sonages of the Bible, their circumstances and charac- 
ters, are enough to astound the most gifted of the old 
Scotch Covenanters. His quick perception of resem- 
blances and rich fancy made him the unconscious 
master of a science of correspondences between thin_gs 
spiritual and natural, that throws the theoretic sys- 
tem of Swedenborg far into the shade. If he speaks 
of an irritable and of a peaceful spirit, he compares 
the one to a noisy street, and the other to a rural soli- 
tude, and gives a graphic picture of the two scenes. 
When he distinguishes the prayer of importunate 
selfishness from that of the Gospel meekness, the one, 
he says, is like a brawling scold, against whom, the 
gate of heaven is shut ; the other is an angel form 
that seraphs welcome to the throne of God. To 
care for riches and to neglect the soul is to be like 
children who laugh when the thief comes in and 
steals the real valuables of the house, and yet cry if 
he touches the least of their jingling trinkets. To 
neglect the soul and pamper the body is to clothe the 
mistress in sackcloth, and array the servant-maid in 
gold and jewels. 

The drift of his discourses was eminently practical. 
He was not fond either of metaphysics or of dogmatic 
theology. He enforced the cardinal Christian virtues, 
especially charity, and denounced the cardinal sins, 
especially covetousness. Profane swearing he could 
not tolerate, and even advises his hearers to strike 
the blasphemer, if words were of no avail. This 
4« 



82 CHRYSOSTOM. 

advice, however, was given during the panic at An- 
tiocb, and may not be a fair instance of his preaching. 
The superiority of the Gospel over every other system, 
especially the Platonic, is a favorite theme with him. 
His views of the divine nature were very broad and 
exalted, and are constantly brought forward in his 
discourses. He also insists much upon the freedom 
of the human will, and says, again and again, that 
no man can be hurt but by himself. He was very 
free in his censures, and declaimed eloquently against 
slavery, priestcraft, and formalism. Neander's learn- 
ing and love for free thought have enabled him to 
collect passages from Chrysostom that would not 
shame the least shackled of our Protestant divines. 

He has frequently been compared to Jeremy Tay- 
lor, but unjustly. They are alike only in an ex- 
uberant fancy and a liberal creed. Chrysostom is 
not pedantic or scholastic like Taylor, whose sermons, 
although decked with incomparable beauties, are 
tedious as a whole, and to a popular assembly would 
be uninteresting. Chrysostom is direct, pointed, glow- 
ing, preaching less on a given subject than with refer- 
ence to the particular wants of the audience before 
him. He has much of Latimer's boldness and sim- 
plicity, and something of his humor. Take some 
ingredients from Latimer and some from Taylor, and 
we might form a compound not unlike Chrysostom. 
In his extemporaneous style he is much like the for- 
mer. As he seems generally to have spoken extem- 
poraneously, even his more elaborate discourses have 
an air of being prompted by the occasion. He was as 



HIS SERMONS. 83 

hearty and outright as honest Hugh, and as httle 
disposed to be mealy-mouthed in deahng with sin 
in high places. He was quite as bold in facing 
Eudoxia as Latimer was in braving Henr}^ the Eighth, 
Both were men of free spirit ; both drew their freedom 
from the Bible ; and what his Saxon manhood did for 
the one, his study of the generous literature of Greece 
did for the other. 

The homilies and sermons of Chrysostom are rich 
in historical interest, showing, as they do, the form 
and color of his times. In reading them, we are car- 
ried back to another age. We find no dry discus- 
sion of theological doctrines, no dull parade of for- 
malisms, but a fresh, free, colloquial address, which 
brings the audience at once before us by its con- 
stant reference to them. The customs of the ancient 
church favored such a mode of address, and are sin- 
gularly at variance with our modern notions of pro- 
priety. Preacher and people felt at liberty to express 
themselves just as they felt in church. The doctors at 
Oxford would be astounded at the difference between 
the ways of a congregation in that supposed golden 
age of church dignity, and their own dainty notions 
of cathedral quietude. The ancient audiences ap- 
plauded freely whatever they liked in the preacher, 
and of course felt at liberty to show their disap- 
probation of what they disliked. Clapping, stamping, 
shouting, leaping, and the waving of light garments 
were no unusual signs of applause ; whilst tears, 
groans, and smiting the breast indicated the com- 
punction of the hearers. When Cyril was happy in 
an appeal, they cried, ''O orthodox Cyril! Gift of 



84 



CHRYSOSTOM. 



God !" When Chiysostom was unusually eloquent, 
waving their garments and plumes, and laying hands 
upon their swords, the people shouted, ''Worthy the 
priesthood ! Thirteenth Apostle ! Christ hath sent 
thee !" The preachers seem to have liked these plau- 
dits, as showing the interested attention of the audi- 
ence. In one case, a grave bishop speaks of being 
applauded as a matter of course, and invites his 
friend, with whom he is arguing, to come and hear 
him, while receiving the honor, and be convinced of 
the truth of his doctrine. Chrysostom evidently had 
so many of these favors as to be at times weary of 
them, and often tells his hearers that lie should much 
prefer their penitence to their plaudits, and that they 
must take good care lest they violate the principles 
which they receive with such acclamation. 

The preachers, who in the cities were generally 
bishops, and less frequently presbyters, appear com- 
monly to have spoken without notes, and to have 
trusted to reporters for the preservation of their dis- 
courses. This fact, and the peculiar relation in which 
they stood to the audience, tended to make their 
addresses very colloquial, and quite different from 
modern sermons. They spoke either from the steps 
of the altar, or from the amho, a platform with a 
reading-desk in the middle of the church, and sitting 
or standing, as they chose. Frequently the preacher 
sat, and the people stood, throughout the sermon. 
The church had not then learned to box its orators 
up, and raise them high in mid air, with a position 
as far from the countenance of the hearer as the ser- 
mon is apt to be from his sympathies. The speaker 



THE ANCIENT PULPIT. 85 

had no fear of being rebuked for flippancy, or of hear- 
ing rebellious imitations of his freedom on the part 
of the audience, so established was the distinction 
between clergy and laity, and so fixed were the 
authority and dignity of the clerical ofl^ice. Often 
several addresses were made during the same meet- 
ing, but always by the clergy, the bishop closing and 
summing up what his presbyters had said. Chry- 
sostom sometimes ends his discourse by stating, that 
he now leaves it to his superior to do better justice 
to the topic. 

Of course, the ancient pulpit was in every respect 
different from the modern. Chrysostom was, indeed, 
a great reformer, yet he changed the moral character, 
rather than the external manner, of preaching. He 
avoided the frequent dogmatic invectives against here- 
tics, and the as frequent vapid allegorical interpre- 
tations of Scripture. His preaching was practical, 
aimed at the life ; it was rational, avoiding both the 
materialistic views of Tertullian's followers and the 
transcendental sublimations of the school of Origen. 
He was eminently a common sense interpreter of 
the Bible, and duly appreciated the letter and the 
spirit too. 

After all, though free from many of the errors pre- 
valent among his contemporaries, Chrysostom shows 
the peculiarities of the taste of his age ; and there 
is not one of his thousand discourses, so far as we can 
judge, which would be considered as a regular sermon 
according to our modern standard, — not one that 
reminds us of Massillon or South, Edwards or Buck- 
minster. He never adopts a logical arrangement, 



86 CHRYSOSTOM. 

although his elaborate work on the priesthood shows 
that he was perfectly competent to write a consecu- 
tive treatise, or sustain a continued argument, when- 
ever he chose. In his homilies, or expository discourses, 
he closes not so frequently with a lesson taught by 
the general sense of the passage he has been ex- 
pounding^ as with one suggested by some of the 
wants of his people, no matter how incongruous the 
suggestion might be with what had gone before. 
Among his sermons, — his master-pieces on the Statues 
for instance, so well translated by Mr. Budge, in the 
Oxford Library, — there is not one that is from begin- 
ning to end devoted to the consecutive treatment of a 
single topic. Each has its strict unity, undoubtedly ; 
but the unity is in the object, not in the subject ; for he 
thinks less of the systematic exposition of a text or 
topic than of meeting with a single purpose the state 
of mind of his hearers. He preached these sermons 
whilst Antioch was in an agony of anxiety, those of 
her citizens who had as yet escaped the emperor's 
vengeance fearing the dungeon, the scourge, or the 
axe. The preacher shows great skill in suiting his 
discourse to them, and it is hypercriticism to blame 
him for sudden transitions, although he may so far 
violate ordinary rules as to break off an enraptured 
description of the benignity of God in creation, as 
shown in the book of nature, and end abruptly with 
a strong rebuke to the people for their habit of profane 
swearing. At another time, while preaching on the 
apostle's advice to Timothy to take a little wine for 
his stomach's sake, he dwells first upon the apostle's 
kindness, and the folly of interpreting his advice as a 



HIS TOPICS. 87 

plea for wine-bibbing, and then glances off to another 
topic, and closes with stating ten reasons why good 
men like Timothy are allowed to suffer sickness and 
affliction, and why the afflicted should not despair, 
and commit or tolerate blasphemy. Yet he always 
came to the point. He never ended a sermon with- 
out saying at the close what the moral state of the 
audience most needed. 

Rhetorician as he was by education under the 
sophist Libanius, he was never so careful of his literary 
reputation as to disdain to be useful. He was willing 
to dwell continually upon one topic, so long as the 
one besetting sin continued. He ends more than half 
of his sermons on the Statues by denouncing the sin 
of profanity. We cannot say how often he preaches 
against theatre-going and money-loving. All his 
sermons were occasional, and in all of them he seems 
as much at liberty as in conversation to say just what 
circumstances required or the people needed.* Some- 
times he is ludicrously familiar. He speaks to the 
people about coming to church after dinner, complain- 
ing of long sermons, talking and laughing in church, 
and in one instance calls attention to a pickpocket 
who was busy at his work among the congregation. 
Yet various as was the character of his discourses, 
Phihp Mayer says truly, that through them all there 
runs, like a shining thread, a practical rehgious spirit, 

* For an exellent critique upon Chrysostom's method of preach- 
ing, and statement of the difference between the ancient homily 
and the modern sermon, see the work of Dr. Philip Mayer upon 
Chrysostom, especially the iutroduction. The volume is dated 
1830. 



DO CHRYSOSTOM. 

and a true oratorical talent, so that it is easy to value 
at their true worth all the doubtful or spurious works 
that have come to us with his name attached to 
them. 

Certainly, it would be folly to hold up the great 
orator of the ancient church as a perfect model for our 
age, or for our country. Boston is not an Antioch, 
nor is the nineteenth century much like^the fourth. 
We live in an age of the general diffusion of know- 
ledge and the inductive exercise of intellect. The 
Reformation, together with the discussions consequent 
upon it, has given great predominance to the critical 
understanding, and made systematic doctrines and 
polished writing more acceptable than authoritative 
statements or glowing appeals ; yet there is much 
that the modern pulpit may learn from the pages of 
Chrysostom, and not only learn, but apply. Man}?- a 
modern audience might be refreshed by listening to a 
racy homily formed on his principles, and would 
regard its free expositions of Scripture and fervent 
appeals to the heart as a pleasant relief from doctrinal 
dissertations, moral lectures, or aesthetic essays. We 
dislike flippancy in the pulpit, and have no relish for 
off-hand crudities anywhere. As little friendly are we 
to the too common dulness and feeling of constraint 
that would have afflicted the gravest of the old fathers, 
could they have become acquainted with the pulpit 
habits of our time. 

We may learn, too, of Chrysostom how to be inde- 
pendent, and, whether as hearers or preachers, that 
we are bound to keep the pulpit independent. As 
Americans, especially as the offspring of New Eng- 



I 



HIS INFLUENCE. 89 

land, we must regard the Christian pulpit as a con- 
servative institution second to no other. Our homes? 
our schools, and our laws rest in no small degree 
upon its support. Its history has been and will be 
intimately connected with our national history. Let 
it keep its high place, and neither become the minion 
of the few nor the sport of the many ; let it mildly? 
yet fearlessly, speak the truth as given by the Scrip- 
tures, rebuking evil in the few and the many, and 
throwing a mantle of charity over repentance and 
faith, whether in the rich and powerful, or the poor 
and enslaved ; and, above all, let it never confound 
the oracles of heaven with the dictates of men, nor 
cry out, at the voice of a single Herod, or of multi- 
tudes with a Herod's spirit, "It is the voice of a God, 
and not of a man." Subserviency may profit for a 
season, but truthfulness conquers in the end. Better 
fall for a time with Chrysostom, than triumph for a 
time with Theophilus. 

Thirty years after his death, the remains of John of 
Antioch were borne in triumph from the tomb in his 
place of exile to a splendid mausoleum in Constanti- 
nople. Two centuries ago, his bones w^ere carried as 
relics to Rome, where they now rest in the chapel that 
bears his name within the walls of St. Peter's. To 
few of the hallowed spots within that majestic cathe- 
dral w^ould one more eagerly hasten than to that 
chapel. Thoughts would there be inspired that might 
sometimes force the attention to wander from the 
seraphic music of the Sistine choir, and compel one to 
hsten to voices from another age and land. The 
church of Rome is still in the ascendant ; her power 



90 CHRYSOSTOM. 

is Still majestic, whilst heu Oriental sister is cast down 
and in humiliation. The Roman patriarch Innocent, 
fourteen centuries ago, interceded, though in vain, for 
his brother of Constantinople, when the latter was 
driven into exile ; and now Rome protects the ashes 
of him Avhom when living she vainly sought to defend. 
The treatment which Ghrysostom received at the 
hands of the ruling powers in the Greek empire was a 
turning point in history, and in its consequences has 
done much to make (he fale of the Eastern church 
differ so widely from the long continued prosperity of 
the church of Rome. 

When his spirit shall come to be again duly honor- 
ed among the nations where his name was first 
canonized, and the East shall return to his principles, 
something of the glory of the former age may come 
back. If, either by the awakening of the Russian 
clergy and nation, by the decline of the Turkish 
power, or by the revival of moral life among the 
churches of the East, Constantinople shall again be- 
come Christian, and the cross supplant the crescent on 
the dome of St. Sophia, next to that of our great 
Master and his apostles, no name would deserve to be 
proclaimed with greater honor on the day of triumph 
than that of John Ghrysostom. 

1846. 



IV. 
JEROME AND HIS TIMES.* 



Rich as was the church of the fourth century in 
illustrious men who adorned imposing office with 
briUiant abihties ; in princes hke the imperial con- 
vert Constantino who begun, and the more consistent 
Theodosius, who completed the union of the church 
and State ; in prelates indomitable as Athanasius, 
profound as Augustine, eloquent as Gregory and 
Chrysostom, and commanding as Ambrose and Basil ; 
it is not to any of these titled dignitaries that Chris- 
tendom in ages since has paid her most frequent hon- 
ors. The Roman church, at least, has passed over 

* 1. Sancti Eusehii Hieronymi Slridonensis, Preshyteri Opera. 
Studio ac Lahore Domini Joliannis Martianay, Preshyteri et Mo- 
nachi Ordinis S. Bendedicti e Congregatione S. Mauri, Parisiis, 
MDCXCIII— MDCCVI. 

Works of St. Eusebius Jerome of Stridon, Presbyter. Edited by 
John Martianay, Presbyter, and Monk of the Benedictine Order of 
the Congregation of St. Maur. In live volumes, folio. 

2. Histoire de Saint Jerome, Pere de VEglise, au IV Siecle; Sa 
Vie, Ses Ecrits et Ses Doctrines. Par F. Z. CoUombet. Paris, 1844. 

History of St. Jerome. Father of the Church in the Fourth Century ; 
his Life ; his Writings and his Doctrines. In two volumes, 8vo. By 
F. Z. Oollombet. 



92 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

this majestic array of princes and prelates witli com- 
parative indifference, and reserved her brightest aure- 
ola for an untitled scholar, who shrank alike from 
courts and councils, who refused the proffered mitre, 
and forbore to exercise even the office of priest. 
Whom can we mean but Jerome, the monk of Bethle- 
hem? As a devotee he has perhaps been more] hon- 
ored by Catholics than any saint upon the calendar 
who has lived since the apostolic times, whilst as a 
scholar he has been ranked by all parties as chief in 
the ancient church. His spirit has haunted the visions 
of monks and nuns, and the imaginations of painters 
and sculptors. His kneehng form meets us in the gor- 
geous windows of the middle age cathedrals, and in 
the rich miniatures of illuminated manuscripts. Who 
has not heard of the picture, in the Yatican, of the 
Last Commuuion of St. Jerome, and who would un- 
dertake to complete the catalogue of similar works or 
name the artists among whom Domenichino and the 
Caracci have taken the lead ? 

It is not merely from the prostrate devotee of the 
papal ages, that the monk of Bethlehem has received 
such honors. His letters and tracts were among the 
first to receive the stamp of the printing-press,* and in 
their Gothic type are now among the most precious 
specimens in antiquarian collections. No fewer than 
eight editions of his entire works have been published, 
the first of which appeared at Basle (1516 — 1520) 

* In the library of Harvard University, we find an edition of his 
epistles which, although without date, according to Brunet's 
Manual, must have been printed as early as 1469, and an edition of 
his tract against Joviuian that bears the date of 1474. 



HIS SCHOLARSHIP. 93 

under the charge of the celebrated Erasmus, and the 
last of which is from the Paris press with ink as yet 
scarcely dry. As an interpreter and translator of 
Scripture, his name stands chief of the fathers in the 
preface of the translators of our approved English 
Bible. As great proof of his literary importance may 
be found in the ponderous volume that Le Clerc 
wrote in question of his scholarship, as in the petu- 
lant and tiresome folios that Martianay and his fel- 
lows sent forth in his defence. The lighter literature 
of a later day has not forgotten the saint. He ap- 
pears conspicuous in the meditations of Zimmer- 
mann and the fancies of Chateaubriand, whilst in the 
gayest city in the world several selections from his 
works have been recently published in a popular 
form, and L. Aime-Martin* ranks with Collombett 
among his eulogists. 

We too are much interested in Jerome. For his 
monkish superstition we of course have little love, nor 
can we find much that is Christ-like in the temper 
with which he met the adversaries of his creed. We 
are interested in him as the best scholar of the ancient 
church. We like to read him because his works are 
the best index of the state of learning in his time, and 
moreover the most faithful mirror of the opinions, 
manners and morals of his age. Recluse as he gene- 
rally was, he kept up a minute acquaintance with con- 
temporary events and characters. His nervous and 
irascible nature never failed to expose every trouble 
that annoyed him. His peculiar temperament reveals 

* (Euvres Mystiques. 1 vol. grand in 8vo. 
t CEuvres Choisies. 10 vols, in 8vo. 



94 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

the presence of every current literary and religious in- 
fluence, as faithfully as the torsion balance measures 
the minute electric forces. If any new opinion were 
started he could never be easy until he lifted his pen 
in the agitation. Much as we may value the homilies 
of Chrysostom for shedding light upon the manners 
and morals of the time, we may prize more the letters 
of Jerome, since these instead of being busied chiefly 
with the affairs of single cities like Antioch or Con- 
stantinople, deal with all Christendom, and reflect 
every shade of the prevalent faith and practice. This 
indefatigable letter writer kept a kind of central post- 
office at Bethlehem, and he was of such a nature that 
of everything that interested him whether in his own 
studies or in current events he must straightway write 
to some of his correspondents. Every literary under- 
taking, however grave, gave occasion for his epistolary 
gift. His elaborate criticisms were written in the form 
of letters, and in the prefaces to his commentaries 
whether upon prophet or evangelist, he is sure to have 
a fling at some crying evil of the day. 

In the cursory sketch which we propose to give of 
the life and labors of this most learned of the Christian 
fathers, although we do not of course presume to add 
anything to the knowledge of tliose who are acquaint- 
ed with the recent foreign contributions to ecclesias- 
tical history, we are safe in saying, that with the aids 
that are at hand, nothing but incorrigible stupidity, 
can prevent a review from giving a more satisfactory 
survey of the subject than any that is offered by our 
current church histories. In reference to Jerome, our 
English historians are wretchedly meagre. The most 



HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 95 

raoy of his German biographers ends his narrative 
with the declaration that the best that has been done 
in this field serves rather to excite than to satisfy the 
desire for a more comprehensive portraiture of the Saint 
and his times. This want of course we may not hope 
to fill. It is enough to try to make out our sketch 
from the best authorities at hand, with such study of 
the works of Jerome himself as we have been able to 
make. 

By universal consent the richest materials are 
furnished from the saint's own pages. The chief 
office of the editor and biographer indeed consists in 
correcting the text and in determining the dates of 
events and the connection of passages, so as to derive 
from the author himself a consistent portrait and har- 
monious story. Of the three editions which separate- 
ly or collectively have been the basis of all the others, 
the chief two, those of Erasmus and Martianay are be- 
fore us, whilst we are reconciled to the absence of that 
of Vallarsi (Verona, 1734-1742) from the fact that 
Schroeckh so fully defines its characteristic, and Col- 
lombel has based upon its principles his entire work. 
Of the almost score of Lives of Jerome that are extant, 
we need not give even the names. Tillemont and 
Martianay deserve the chief place on the list, the 
former from the careful criticism which he applies to 
the works and life of the saint, an application not al- 
ways ungrateful to his Jansenist scruples — the latter 
from his indefatigable labor and devoted partizanship. 
If Vallarsi has in some respects surpassed them both, 
especially in a more accurate chronological arrange- 
ment of Jerome's letters, it is to be remembered how 



96 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

much he depended upon the labors of his predecessors, 
and that he has builded upon then- foundation. Of 
the work of Dolci (Ancona, 1750) and that of Engel- 
stoft (Copenh. 1797), we may say with Collombet, that 
they have not reached us. As to the volumes of 
Collombet himself, they cannot be read without plea- 
sure, and porfit, much as the constant tone of eulogy 
may offend us, and distasteful as the ornate style and 
sometimes bombastic rhetoric may occasionally be. 
The work has evidently been prepared with consider- 
able study and great ambition, and comes to us with 
the sanction of a brief from the late pope, and a 
dedication to a cardinal as noted as De Bonald. It is 
of considerable service in enabling us to judge of the 
Saint in connection with his times, although the pro- 
testant reader is often repelled by the papal hue in. 
which the enthusiastic Frenchman invests the Christ- 
endom of the fourth century. The whole of the two 
volumes, however, fails to give so good or at least so 
definite an idea of the general subject as the half 
volume of Schroeckh* in his history, and the twenty 
quarto pages by Von Colin in the Encyclopaedia of 
Ersch and Gruber (Leipsic, 1831), — an article admir- 
able for its learning, compactness and point, tainted 
though it may be with a httle of Gibbon's sarcasm. 
Of Neander's labors in this department, we need not 
speak at length. Although far from beiag full enough 
to meet our wants, his observations are distinguished 
by his usual learning, freedom and good sense. It is 
enough to say of the biography by the Jesuit, John 

* Christliche Kirchengescliichte, T. XL Leipzig, 1794, pp. 1 — 
239. 



EARLY EDUCATION. 97 

Stilting,* which although by no means of recent date 
came latest to hand, that it is an unqualified and ex- 
travagant eulogium, and shows its character very well 
from the fact that about thirty of its folio pages are de- 
voted to the investigation of the relics of the Saint, and 
other like matters connected with his posthumous 
marvels. Although far better tempered than Martianay, 
and remarkably laborious in histoiical details, Stilting 
shares something of the Benedictine editor's dispo- 
sition, and adds one to the many instances in which 
the irascible monk has innoculated his champions with 
the virus of his own temper. But we must not linger 
any longer upon these preliminaries. 

In the middle of the fourth century, a young 
Illyrian, who had already exhausted the literary 
privileges of his provincial home, in company with a 
schoolmate of like age, turned towards Rome. He 
came to enjoy the instructions of the celebrated 
teachers who held their schools in the imperial city. 
Judging from his own allusions, we cannot form a 
very favorable idea of his native place. The people 
of Stridon were gluttonous and avaricious, whilst the 
bishop Lupicinus was a pastor not unUke his flock. 
The student's childhood had been under the tuition 
of a pedagogue who drilled him in the rudiments so 
severely that, using an epithet fiom Horace, he spoke 
of him in after years as the savage Orbilius. He was 
born of Christian parents, probably in affluent circum- 
stances, and left home with favorable dispositions 

* Acta Sanctorum, Septemb. Tom. VIII, pp. 418—6888. An- 
twerp, 1762. Fol. copy iu Library of Harvard University. 

5 



98 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

towards Christianity, although without any very 
decided personal convictions. Such was the young 
lUyrian, who came to Rome to enjoy the learning of 
her noted schools. He thought quite as little as his 
teacher Donatus how soon the tables would be turned, 
and Home would look to this pilgrim to her literary 
shrine as her own most learned teacher, and that 
after ages would regard Eusebius Jerome as the most 
illustrious scholar of the Latin church. 

The year of his arrival at Rome is not ascertained. 
It is very clear, however, that he was there in A. D. 
363. at the time of the death of the emperor Julian. 
What was then his age is a much controverted ques- 
tion, since his birth has been placed at dates as widely 
apart as 329 and 346. He has been supposed by 
most of his earlier biographers, who have followed the 
ancient chronicle of Prosper, to have been born in 
331, although this date is not consistent with the 
same writer's subsequent statement that Jerome died 
in 420 at the age of 91.* The saiiit, moreover, speaks 
of his being a mere boy at the time of Juhan's death, 
and from this and other equivalent expressions, Baro- 
nius was led to fix the date at 342, and has had the 
approbation of Dupin, Tillemont, Dolci and Lardner. 
Vallarsi goes still further, and fixes upon the year 
346, and is followed in this opinion by Collombet. 
As our own patience has been well nigh exhausted 
in following Stilting through his elaborate vindication 
of the earlier date in reply to the six or seven argu- 

* This incongruity is regarded by Silting as coming from an 
error of the pen, which led the transcribers to write Undenona 
gesimo, XCI. 



AT ROME. 99 

ments of Baronius and his followers, we will not test 
the temper of our readers by rehearsing the con- 
troversy. The Jesuit certainly makes out a very 
good case, and proves that Jerome at least might call 
himself a boy at any period without implying any- 
thing more, than that he was then a pupil of his 
masters or a mere tyro in learning. Schroeckh, who 
has gone into the particulars of the controversy, is 
quite satisfied with Stilting's argument, and thinks it 
a sufficient refutation of the latter date, that about the 
year 403, Jerome addressed Augustine as his son, an 
epithet that would not be appropriate if the former 
was but in his sixtieth year, since the latter was 
certainly almost fifty. This point, however, is by no 
means satisfactory, since ten years of seniority might 
give great venerableness to one, who like Jerome, had 
hastened old age by his austerities, and who from 
his ghostly sanctity might, as has sometimes been the 
habit of spiritual directors, address even his seniors as 
his children. 

But, however this controversy as to the saint's birth 
may be decided, it is beyond question that in 363 he 
was in Rome. At that time the condition of the 
empire was peculiar, and the church on the eve of 
her most brilUant period. Juhan had died, and with 
him died the enterprise of supplanting the doctrines 
of Christ by the ethics of Antoninus, and substituting 
for Christianity a splendid but visionary eclecticism of 
philosophical deism, nature worship and vulgar pa- 
ganism. The apostate died ; under the auspices of 
Jovian the Labarum of Constantine again glittered at 
the head of the imperial legions, and in the hearing 



100 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

of the young Illyrian the pagans expressed their dis- 
may at the summary vengeance taken by the Chris- 
tian God upon the restorer of the ancient altars, and 
their wonder that he could be called patient and 
long suffering. But yet for many years the old reli- 
gion retained its temples and pageants. Pontiffs, 
augurs, vestals, flamens, with all their ancient retinue, 
still exercised their offices, and by their regular suc- 
cession connected the Rome of Constantine and 
Jovian with the Rome of Numa. But it could not 
escape a mind so sagacious as Jerome's and one so 
tremulously sensitive to every popular movement, that 
a power was at work in the empire, that must over- 
throw the pagan idols, and set up the cross on the 
very altar of victory. More than four hundred tem- 
ples or chapels still remained to satisfy the supersti- 
tion of the people ; yet there were a few far less 
conspicuous edifices which were resorted to with a 
kind of reverence unknown to the votaries of Jupiter 
or Mars. The BasiHca of the Lateran, and that of 
St. Peter with others of like stamp were frequented 
by the followers of the cross, and already the Chris- 
tian bishops began to rival the pagan pontiffs in the 
splendor of their array. The great prelates of the 
East and the West, who were to make the close of the 
century so brilUant in the Christian annals, had not 
yet appeared. The veteran Athanasius occupied the 
most conspicuous place among the churches, and 
under the patronage of Jovian, had promise of passing 
the remainder of his troubled life in dignity and 
peace. 

How Jerome passed his student years at Rome, he 



STUDIES. 101 

has pretty fully disclosed. He was a close student, 
somewhat of a man of pleasure, and occasionally he 
was seized with the impulses of a devotee. He learn- 
ed grammar of Donatus the commentator upon Ter- 
ence, and rhetoric probably of Victorinus who was 
celebrated for the brilliancy of his school and for the 
notoriety of his conversion. Jerome was ambitious of 
literary name — made himself very familiar with the 
Roman and probably somewhat with the Greek litera- 
ture, and not content with the instructions of the lec- 
ture-room, frequented the courts of law to take practi- 
cal lessons .in logic and oratory. So stong was the 
impression left upon him by the studies of this period, 
that in old age they haunted his dreams, and the 
ghostly monk seemed to himself to be listening to the 
rival pleaders, or to be declaiming before his master. 
He made a point of gathering a library at Rome, and 
thus unconsciously to himself was providing for his 
solitary years the companionship of the choice spirits 
of the classic world. 

Although far from being strict in his habits, he 
loved to frequent the places in Rome that had been 
hallowed by the events of the martyr-age. He visited 
the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs. It was a 
favorite habit with him to take a few companions, 
and on Sundays go down in the crypts of the cata- 
combs, and wander into the subterranean gloom 
among the monuments of that solemn cemetery. 
There rambling, now spelling out the inscriptions no 
the tombs, and now quoting some line of Virgil as the 
darkness reminded ^him of the poet's Avernus, this 
Sunday loiterer had then within him the elements of 



102 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

character that were to give him such a name as the 
monk and scholar among the Christian fathers. Yet 
he had no such sympathy with those dark retreats as 
to destroy his zest for the gaieties of the capital. He 
lived very freely, and with all his subsequent rever- 
ence for chastity, and contempt even for lawful mar- 
riage, he lays no claim to the credit of having never 
left the path of virtue. He allows that he could not 
well resist temptation, and that in youth he was as 
emulous in taking the lead in pleasure as afterwards 
in devotion. He laid claim by a singular figure of 
speech to the crown of virginity because in his soul 
he honored the virtue the more from not possessing it 
himself.* 

At Rome Jerome received baptism. But whether 
this took place before or after his journey to Gaul, it is 
very certain that during that journey his strongest 
convictions were felt, and the purpose was formed 
that shaped his whole subsequent life. It was in the 
city of Treves, that he first resolved to devote himself 
to Christ, and formed with his companion and coun- 
tryman Bonosus, the plan of an ascetic life. He evi- 
dently carried with him in his journey at the outset a 
decided taste for Christian studies, as he busied him- 
self with the Christian literature of Gaul, and copied 
for his friend Rufinus the work of Hilary of Poictiers 
upon Synods, and also his Exposition of the Psalms. 
It is not strange, that on the banks of the Rhine 
among a semi-barbarous people, he should view life 
'and the world far otherwise than in the gay metropolis, 

* Epist. XXX. p. 242. T. IV. Martianay. 



HIS TRAVELS. 103 

look upon his past history in a far graver spirit, and be 
led, moreover, to a better understanding of the genius of 
that church which was to restore the falling majesty 
of Rome, and bring into prostrate reverence the pride 
of those fierce nations who were preparing to over- 
throw the eternal city. It is a coincidence worthy of 
being mentioned, that the see of Arnoldi, bishop of 
Treves, the champion of the holy coat that has so 
lately convulsed Germany, should be in the city in 
which Jerome, the father of Romish monasticism and 
relic worship, met with the impressions that made 
him what he became. Truly the nineteenth century 
is not wholly different from the fourth. Nay, we 
have serious doubts whether Jerome, in his most erra- 
tic moods, w^ould have dared to undertake the enter- 
prise of the holy coat. 

The exact extent of his travels in Gaul, a country 
with whose people he had much subsequent inter- 
course and great sympathy, we do not know. He 
probably went as far as the western coast and looked 
towards Britian and that far distant continent, that 
was not for ages to see the light of Christianity. 
After his return he spent some time in the famous 
city of Aquileia, not far distant from his own native 
place, and lived upon terms of intimate friendship 
with a circle of Christian friends, among whom were 
the priests Rufinus, afterwards his enemy, and Chro- 
matins afterwards bishop of the city, and other clergy, 
and monks. Prom this place he wrote probably the 
first letter that has reached us, and related to a friend 
the particulars of a strange occurrence at Yercella, 
in the neighborhood, where an innocent woman was 



104 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

kept alive by a miracle after having received seven 
blows from the sword of the executioner. This letter 
may have been the cause of his flight which soon 
followed, since his version of the affair must have re- 
flected severely upon the conduct of the civil tribunal. 
But whatever the cause, whether political troubles, 
family embarrassments, or, as the less believing sus- 
pect, the heat of his own passions, *' a storm " came 
over him, and he was obliged to flee. In company 
with his friends Evagrius and Innocentius, and not 
forgetting his precious library, he turned his face to- 
wards the East to visit the regions for which his heart 
had many a time yearned. It was about the year 
372, that he undertook this adventurous journey, and 
traversing Thrace, Pontus, Bithynia, Galatia, Cappa- 
docia, Cilicia, he arrived at last at Antioch and ere 
long sought a solitude in the Syrian desert. While 
at Antioch, he was seized with a severe sickness and in 
addition to his personal sufferings was grieved to the 
heart by the death of his friend Innocentius. It was 
probably at this time that he had that vision of judg- 
ment against the heathen classics which he describes 
in one of his letters to Eustochium, and in which he 
heard himself condemned by the judge as a mere 
Ciceronian and no Christian, and sought to escape 
the sentence by promising to abjure heathen literal 
lure forever. A dream like this was very likely to 
haunt the fevered hours of an invalid such as he was, 
and indicated Yery plainly the state of mind that led 
him to seek for a retreat among the monks of Chalcis. 
But if the recluse had indulged in roseate fancies 
of sohtary life, he was destined to be grievously dis- 



IN THE DESERT. 105 

appointed. He had frequent occasion to remember 
the remark of Horace, that they who cross seas are 
far from changing their dispositions with their abode. 
He found, that the retirement of the desert gave him 
no safeguard from temptation. In the midst of his 
vigils and fastings, his imagination would steal away 
and revel in visions of Rome, its beauties and re- 
finements. He suffered sadly alike in health and 
spirits. But in study he soon found the solace that 
could alleviate if not remove his desolation. As the 
world in which he had moved was hid from his sight, 
the realm of hterature opened upon him with new 
brightness. While at Antioch he had informed him- 
self of the system of Apollinarius of Laodicea, so 
celebrated for his skill in interpreting Scripture and 
for his peculiar view of the nature of Christ: and had 
thus acquired important aids in the science of biblical 
interpretation. Even before retiring to the desert, he 
had attempted a commentary upon the book of Oba- 
diah, a work whose loss is not much to be deplored, 
since in the preface to his subsequent commentary 
upon the same book, he speaks of it contemptuously 
as a token of his youthful ignorance and specimen of 
vain allegorizing. 

His desire to interpret the sacred books led him to 
feel the want of knowledge of the Hebrew tongue. 
To meet this want, and at the same time aid him in 
subduing his fiery nature, he put himself under the 
instruction of a converted Jew and studied the He- 
brew and probably Chaldee. He evidently thought 
it no little mortification for one so familiar with Cicero 
and duintilian and Pliny to occupy his mind with a 
5* 



106 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

language so harsh and inflated.* Bat what was first 
a sacrifice became in time his dehght, and the rechise 
soon grew more proud of his Hebrew than of any 
branch of learning, glorying as much on mortifying 
his classic tastes by this new study as in mortifying 
his flesh by fastings and vigils. His letters are rich 
in pictures of his hermit life. He appears to have 
gained a subsistence by the labor of his own hands, 
and to have passed his days in toil, study and de- 
votion. At this time he probably wrote his eloquent, 
although extravagant history of Paulus, the first her- 
mit. But fond as he was of study and determined 
as he had been to shut out the world and its agita- 
tions, he gave constant proof that he was still like 
other men, and could not be indifferent to the current 
of events. At first declaring that he had lost all 
knowledge of the affairs of his own country, and did 
not even know that it was in existence, he soon 
engaged in a close correspodence with his former 
friends in the West ; now requesting that his sister, 
who had recovered IVom a sad fall from virtue, might 
be encouraged in the path of rectitude ; now asking 
for theological books and again offering to spare 
manuscript copies, versions and explanations of the 
Scriptures from his own collection. 

But the solitary had not yet so schooled his mind as 
to be long content to hold intercourse through the me- 
dium of letters. He was drawn into controversy that 
drew him from his retreat. Pour rival bishops laid 
claim to the possession of -the see of Antioch. Of 

*" Stridentia auhelantlaque verba." Epistl. XCV, Ad Rusticum, 
p. 774. Martianay, T. IV. 



CONTROVERSY. 107 

course Jerome had no thought of favoring the claims 
of the Arian Euzoius or the latitudinarian Vitahs. 
His choice must he between the two Cathohcs, Me- 
letius and Paulinus. Meletius was obviously the 
legitimate bishoj3, and had such defenders as Basil 
and Chrysostom. But Paulinus had the countenance 
of Athanasius and pope Damasus, and his cause 
triumphed alike by the posture of the rival factions 
and the connection of the controversy with a dispute 
as to the words most fit to be employed in defining 
the Trinity, — a dispute that soon exceeded in vio- 
lence and extent the original controversy. Jerome 
was at first evidently at a loss what side to take in 
the conflict, and various causes increased his per- 
plexity. He was no metaphysician and was almost 
crazed by the questions that were put to him by the 
monks who came to his cell to learn his mind as to 
the use of the word " hypostases." It was at once 
following his own inclinations and relieving himself 
of personal responsibility to appeal to Damasus of 
Rome, which he did in a letter not to be surpassed 
in ambitious rhetoric and servile adulation. What 
answer Damasus returned to this and a second similar 
letter, we do not know. But we soon find Jerome 
at Antioch upon intimate terms with Paulinus, and 
receiving ordination as presbyter at his hands. This 
was in the year 378 or 379. Instead of being weary 
of controversy and demanding as he had threatened 
to do the right of utter solitude in the desert, he 
engaged still more in the affairs of the church, and 
soon sent forth a treatise upon the Luciferian con- 
troversy in which he speaks in a tone of unusual 



108 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

mildness, and repudiates the doctrine that the bishops 
of the Arians, after renouncing their heretical con- 
nection, should not be recognized as bishops, and that 
the converts from Arianism should be re-baptized. 
The saint showed some humor in styling Hilary, the 
deacon who advocated the re-baptism of all converted 
heretics, the ' Deucalion of the world.' 

But the controversialist was not so absorbed in these 
disputes as to forget the claims of a scholar, and 
Jerome sought the privileges of the brilliant schools of 
Constantinople and the countenance of Gregory its 
eloquent and learned bishop. Here he studied closely 
the Greek language with which before he seems to 
have been but partially acquainted, although we can 
by no means favor the idea sanctioned by Rufinus 
that he knew nothing of Greek while pursuing his 
studies at Rome. It was well for him to acquaint 
himself with the Byzantian literature, especially its 
method of interpretation, and thus enlarge even if by 
the too rhetorical and Origenizing method of Gregory, 
the rules which he had learned in the more literal and 
practical school of Antioch. Yet he was too good a 
critic to be blinded by the glitter even of Gregory's 
eloquence into acquiescence with his ideas, and some- 
what slily remarks that an ignorant audience, such as 
listened to the prelate's expositions, was not by any 
means the best test or school of biblical criticism. 
From Gregory however he acknowledged that he re- 
ceived important aids. How could a mind so suscep- 
tible as his be otherwise than quickened and enlarged 
by the society of perhaps the most accomplished 
bishop of his day, at once poet, orator and theologian, 



RETURN TO ROME. 109 

imbued with classic knowledge gained at Athens in 
company with the noted JuUan, and surpassed in 
eloquence only by his successor Chrysostom ? 

Although so long an inhabitant of the East, Jerome 
was at heart, a Roman, and labored for the literature 
of the Latin church by enriching it with translations 
of the most approved works from the Greek. He 
translated and enlarged the Chronicles of Eusebius ; 
and showed how fully he began to appreciate the ser- 
vices of the great scholar, whom he alone was to sur- 
pass, by his translation of the homilies of Origen upon 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Yet then, so long before his 
conflict with the Origenists, he showed that he was no 
blind follower of the method of him whom he pro- 
nounced as second only to the Apostles, by openly de- 
parting from some of his criticisms. At the same time 
we are not disposed to regard the instance of his in- 
dependence so frequently alleged, his criticism upon 
the vision of Seraphim in Isaiah, as an improvement 
upon the allegorical fancies of the great Alexandrian. 

Once more the scholar was called away from his 
books to mingle in the agitations of the times. In 
381, Meletius died at Antioch, and his partisans in- 
stead of recognizing the legitimacy of Paulinus ap- 
appointed Flavianus his successor. The old dispute 
was renewed, appeal was made to a Roman synod, to 
which Paulinus went, followed by his friends Epipha- 
nius and Jerome. The decision of this synod had lit- 
tle effect in settling the controversy in question, but its 
session resulted in no small advantage to Jerome, 
From his acquaintance with affairs at Antioch, he 
was appoiated secretary and adviser of Damasus, and 



110 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

in this capacity displayed such learning and ability as 
to be employed in far more ambitious literary labors. 
He was often consulted upon questions of exegesis, 
and at the request of Damasus, began to translate the 
work of the Alexandrian catechist Didymus upon the 
Holy Spirit. We cannot much admire the manner in 
which he solved some of the Roman father's critical 
problems. Take for example the parable of the pro- 
digal son. Something more than Greek and Hebrew 
was wanting to save him from the folly of regarding 
the two sons as the two nations, the Jews and the 
Heathen, and finding minute historical parallels for 
every feature of our Savour's touching narrative. He 
still cherished his taste for Origen, and at Rome trans- 
lated two of his homilies upon the Canticles. In a 
more arduous labor however he was now to be en- 
grossed. 

The Western Church possessed no authorized ver- 
sion of the New Testament, but was obliged to depend 
upon divers anonymous translations which varied as 
much in sense as in phraseology. In public worship 
and in every controverted question, these varieties 
were very troublesome, and Damasus was desirous of 
having an approved version made from the original 
Greek. Jerome was called to the task and executed 
it most faithfully by a careful comparison of the cur- 
rent versions with one another and the original. He 
first translated the four Gospels, and sent them forth 
with a preface to Damasus, and tables and marginal 
notes for the better understanding of the parallel pas- 
sages. He went on with his undertaking, and labored 
upon the remaining books of the New Testament. 



INFLUENCE AT ROME. Ill 

He also corrected the old Latin version of the Psalter 
by the Septuagint, and busied himself with comparing 
the Greek version of Aquila with the Hebrew text. 
This first revision of the Bible was subsequently com- 
pleted in the East. The only portions of it now ex- 
tant are the Psalms, Job, and the New Testament.* 

But the scholar was still at heart the monk, and 
Rome was to feel the influence of his asceticism as 
well as of his learning. The strictness of his life 
made him very conspicuous in a capital whose clergy 
already began to revel in all the luxuries of the world, 
and it was soon seen that the ascetic student was as 
little disposed to keep his austerity as his learning to 
himself in such a way as to provoke the worldly, 
astonish the moderate, and awe the devout. The 
views which Athanasius had brought with him from 
the East in his journey to Rome, found far more fol- 
lowers when advocated by the eloquent scholar than 
by the stern dogmatist. He scandalized a large party 
of the clergy by his denunciation of their laxity, and 
drew upon him the attention of society at large by the 
sensation which he created among the Roman ladies. 
Strange it is^ yet by no means unaccountable, that 
among the rich and privileged there have always 
been found those who are most earnest in condemning 
the vanities of the world, and most ready to listen to 
the praises of sohtude and renunciation. From the 
more favored classes asceticism has derived its most 
devoted champions, its Basil, Benedict, Bernard, Do- 
minic, Francis, Catherine of Genoa, Theresa, and a 
multitude of the same high mark. The reason is 

* Martianay, T. I. p. 1185. 



112 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

obvious ; they who have tasted the pleasures of the 
world are more likely to feel their unsatisfactory 
character, than they who have seen them only in the 
enchantments of distance ; and, moreover, the refine- 
ment of cultivated society is apt to bring with it sensi- 
bilities that subject their possessors to disappointment, 
life-weariness or yearning for retirement. It was 
among the courtly circles of Rome, that the accom- 
plished monk of S3a-ia found most willing and enthu- 
siastic listeners. Several of the most distinguished 
widows and maidens resigned themselves wholly to 
his direction. Thus the monastic spirit took its 
strongest hold in Rome at a time when, under the 
auspices of Theodosius, the Christian church was 
about to wear its most brilliant secular honors, and to 
open even to worldly ambition the path of ecclesiastical 
preferment. By his pen as shown in his reply to 
Helvidius on the perpetual Virginity of the Blessed 
Mary, and by his conversation as many a Roman 
household proved, Jerome contended for the sanctity 
of celibacy and the worth of the ascetic life. Marcella, 
a rich and gifted widow, who had previously led a 
very devout life, was first to ask the monk^s counsel 
in the study of the Scriptures, and offered the use of 
her stately palace on the Aventine for the re-unions of 
the pious circle that gathered around her. But it was 
not with Marcella and her mother Albina, devoted 
though they were that his destiny was to be most 
intimately connected. The names of Paula and her 
daughter Eustochium are identified with the history 
of their austere director, and the letters addressed to 
them by him have been in all ages among the 



HIS CONVERTS. 113 

manuals of nuns and devotees. Under the influence 
of their friendship a fresh zeal for biblical study seized 
him. for now he was sure of readers eager and able to 
enjoy the results of his labors. Jerome was always 
very dependent upon feminine society, and when most 
eloquent in praise of retirement or in denouncing the 
vanity of the sex, he proved his dependence by the 
assiduity with which he courted their regard, and 
addressed to them his ghostly epistles. He had not a 
little of that bachelor temperament which leads so 
many men to rail against the vanity of woman and 
at the same time never be happy without her society. 
His letters to Paula and Marcella contain some of his 
most valuable biblical interpretations. When we look 
over his letters to his female friends upon the worth of 
celibacy, we cannot but wish that for his own credit 
he had always confined himself to scriptural exegesis. 
How he could have written as he did upon virginity 
to a young girl like Eustochium* we cannot under- 
stand. That epistle is in shocking taste, and detesta- 
bly gross in its allusions. The monk either sinned 
against the prevalent standard of propriety in such 
statements and illustrations, or Roman society had 
sadly degenerated since the days of Cicero and Tullia, 
or delicacy of speech had been placed among the 
dainty refinements of the world and with them been 
put oflf by the ascetic party. With some reason, a 
prejudice arose against the instigator of the ascetic 
movement. The relatives of the wealthy ladies whom 
he had converted looked upon him as the robber of 

* Marlianay, T. IV. Ep. XVIII. p. 27. 



114 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

their inheritance. The clergy winced beneath his 
rebukes, and were not slow in retahating. It was 
looked upon as an intolerable grievance that young 
women were prohibited from associating with men, 
and that wine should be forbidden. It was thought 
that Blesilla, the second daughter of Paula, whose 
second marriage Jerome had prevented, was brought 
to her premature death by excessive austerities, and 
such was the excitement upon the subjecl. that the 
populace at the funeral were provoked ahiiost to 
violence against the author of the wrong. Jerome's 
popularity so far waned that he who was regarded as 
the most available candidate to succeed to the chair 
of Damasus found his position in Rome far from 
comfortable. 

But he was not of a temper to be put down by his 
enemies. Their very attack upon him he made the 
occasion of gaining a yet more commanding position. 
He looked towards the East, for some calm retreat, 
where from the heights of monastic sanctity, he might 
still dictate to the church, and act upon its opin- 
ions and manners as never before. To the maiden 
Asella* he wrote a parting letter, giving his view of 
Rome, and his three years' stay there, leaving to her 
and her friends the task of vindicating his memory 
from the charges brought against him in the Babel 
to which he now pronounced his farewell. Attended 
by his younger brother Paulinianus, by the presbyter 
Yincentius and several monks, he embarked in Au- 
gust 385 for Palestine. Paula and Eustochium soon 

* Martianay, Ep. XXVIII. p. 65. 



r 



AT BETHLEHEM. 115 



joined him at Antioch. It was no small triumph to 
the monk and his cause, that this noted woman, 
whose family boasted the blood of JEneas and the 
Juhan race, should leave the city of the Caesars, for 
the land of the Nazarene and a life of self-denial- 
From Antioch, the coming winter, the company of 
devotees began their tour of Palestine. At Jerusalem, 
the Roman pro-consul prepared for Paula a stately 
abode, but she chose to lodge in a humble cell. 
Visiting Bethlehem, Paula was overwhelmed with 
emotion as she looked upon the place of the Saviour's 
birth, and resolved to make that her abiding place. 
First, however, she must see Egypt. In Egypt, as 
elsewhere, Jerome did not allow his devotional rap- 
tures to blind him to his favorite pursuits. The sites 
hallowed by ancient miracles, by saintly men, or 
memorable deeds, he investigated with critical eye, 
and notwithstanding his gray hairs he was not 
ashamed to sit as a learner in the catechetical school 
where the blind Didymus now discharged the office 
of the great Origen. 

Returning to Bethlehem, the devotees gave them- 
selves in good earnest to the contemplative life. A 
few years saw Jerome transferred from his little cell 
at the gate of the town, to the charge of a monastery 
erected by the charity of Paula, who herself was at 
the head of a similar establishment for nuns. Here 
Jerome passed the remainder of his days, living in 
the simplest manner, never relaxing his austerities, 
and finding his only diversion in biblical study, letter- 
writing and theological controversy. He applied him- 
self with new zeal to the Hebrew language, under 



116 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

the guidance of the Jew, Baianina, who came to him 
by night from fear of violence from his own nation. 
In the inquiring minds of Paula and her daughter, in 
the enthusiasm of nuns, monks and the vast crowds 
of pilgrims who sought the shrine of Christ's birth, the 
devoted scholar found motive and appreciation suf- 
ficient to encourage him in his work. His vision of 
judgment did not prevent him from reviving his classic 
studies, and for the instruction of children confided to 
his care if not for his own entertainment, he opened 
once more the forbidden pages of the great heathen 
masters. Yet the Bible was his absorbing study, and 
at the request of Paula, in spite of his professions of 
inability, he was led step by step to give a kind of J 
commentary upon nearly the whole of the Scriptures, 
for the instruction of herself and daughter. Next to 
those of Paula, stood the claims of the Roman widow 
Marcella, who upon the death of her mother Albina, 
sought consolation anew in the sacred books. His 
first labors were his comments upon the epistles to 
Philemon and to the Galatians, the Ephesians and tp 
Titus. Then he turned to the Old Testament, and 
gave an explanation of the book so cherished by the 
monks, Ecclesiastes. Then (about 390) appeared his 
tracts on Hebrew proper names — on the names and 
position of places mentioned in the Bible, — and his 
Hebrew Questions upon the book of Genesis. In 
rapid succession came his completion of his trans- 
lation of Didymus on the Holy Spirit, his seven tracts 
on Psalm x — xvi, his lives of Malchus and Hilarion, 
his prosecution of his enterprise of revising the old 
Latin version of the Scriptures from the Alexandrians 



JOVINIAN. 117 

He now began his great task of translating the Old 
Testament from the original Hebrew, and by the 
year 393 completed the books of Samuel, Kings, Job 
and the Prophets, and meanwhile composed com- 
mentaries upon five of the lesser prophets, besides 
writing at the suggestion of the Roman prefect, his 
catalogue of distinguished church writers. 

From the calm retirement of his cell, the monkish 
student was now startled by the rise of a powerful 
adversary of the monastic doctrines. Jovinian had 
asserted at Rome the worthlessness of celibacy in 
securing salvation, and maintained that all baptized 
Christians stood equally accepted in the kingdom of 
heaven. The ascetic school at Rome was scanda- 
lized at this attack upon their darhng doctrine, and 
Jerome as with a scream of horror at the outrage, 
sprang to the rescue first with two books against the 
heretic, and then (394 or 395) with an apology for the 
previous work, whose ultraism was met with scorn 
from his enemies and fears from his friends. The 
fierce champion of monasticism, however, must have 
been gratified at this time with the notice of the 
renowned Augustine, who first wrote to him in 393, 
to introduce a young clergyman to his regard, and 
who afterwards renewed the correspondence. Yet the 
testy recluse ill brooked the advice even of Augustine, 
and a jealousy sprung up between two men who of 
all others ought to have been friends, from their 
pecuhar fitness to benefit each other. Jerome was 
the scholar and Augustine the theologian. The learn- 
ing of the one would have been a great aid to the 
profound thought of the other by furnishing exact 



118 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

information, whilst the logic of the thinker would 
have been of invaluable service to the scholar in 
chastening- his rhetoric and invigorating- his mind. 
But these two veterans of the Latin church were 
upon ill terms one with the other, until at last com- 
mon hostility to Pelagius brought them into agree- 
ment. 

The other controversies which in turn engaged the 
mind of Jerome we can merely mention, as they are 
so fully treated in church histories. Sad is it when 
friends fall out with one another, especially friends 
from youth upwards. Such was the lot of Jerome and 
Rufinus in the famous Origenistic controversy. It 
was natural enough that Jerome should be troubled at 
being identified, even in a friendly spirit, at Rome 
through Rufinus with the school of Origen, for much 
as he prized the Alexandrian scholarship, he was by 
his position and nature, little inclined to his Platoniz- 
ing theology. He erred sadly in going to such ex- 
tremes, and so reviling the illustrious man whom he 
had once ranked next to the apostles. Ten years the 
controversy lasted (394 — 404), and did not end until it 
rent Christendom into hostile factions, and brought 
discord to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Posterity has 
very amicably united the two names placed in such 
opposition by this controversy, for Jerome has been 
called the Origen of the Latin church. But whilst 
the Latin father is the superior in broad and exact 
scholarship, the great Alexandrian bears the palm for 
philosophical acuteness, penetrating judgment, calm 
faith and uniform charity. 

But it was upon the head of the follower of Jovin- 



HIS COMMENTARIES. 119 

ian and the oppugner of the rising passion for relics, 
pilgrimages, celibacy and asceticism, that the fiercest 
anathemas of the saint were to fall. Nothing in the 
whole compass of theological controversy has ever 
come before us, that has seemed more fierce than his 
second letter against Yigilantius.* He writes as if his 
dearest convictions of Christianity had been assailed, 
and as if he saw in his alarm his whole stock of ascetic 
riches snatched away at one fell swoop by this wretch 
whom by a play upon his name he calls Dormitantius 
or sleepy-head. 

But even during these years of controversy his 
studies and correspondence went on. His translation! 
of the Bible was completed by the year 404, a year 
marked by the death of Paula. His commentaries 
were continued during the remaining sixteen years of 
his life. His prefaces to them are very rich in illustra- 
tions of the history of the times. The conquest of 
Rome by Alaric is brought nearer to us by the pathetic 
allusions to it in the commentary upon Ezekiel ; and 
the unfinished pages upon Jeremiah, from which 
death in the year 420 snatched the aged student, are 
in mournful unison with that age of declension, and 
that life so solitary and desolate in its close. Yet 
with all the loneliness of his position, ^nd in the midst 
of great revolutions that shook the empire, and en- 
dangered his own retreat, the soul of the monk could 
not be utterly desolate. He had something to hope 
from his labors for the church. With his visions of 

* Martianay, Tom. IV. Classis Til. p. 279. 

t Given by Martianay, T. I. under the name Bibliotheca Divina, 
not in the edition of Erasmus. 



120 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

heaven, no mean prospect of influence upon future 
ages must have been mingled. We are AvilUng to 
view him as an earnest devotee, and deem the sonnet 
of the Oxford bard* no exaggeration : 

The peaceful star of Bethlehem 

Came o'er thy solitude. 
The radiance of that heavenly gem 

Lit up thy sterner mood ; 
Yea, like a star in murky wells, 
Cheering the bed where darkness dwells, 
The images of earth its happier light imbued. 

The thought of the Eternal child 

Upon thy cloistral cell 
Must sure have cast an influence mild 

And like a holy spell. 
Have peopled that fair Eastern night 
With dreams meet for an Eremite, ■ 
Beside that cradle poor, bidding the world farewell. 

Yet other thoughts may have crossed the mind of 
that old man and blended with his anticipation of 
bliss. There he rests upon his miserable pallet about 
to breathe his last. He has lived through a most in- 
teresting period — not far, probably, from a century of 
eventful history. He has known the leading men 
and taken part in the leading movements of his time. 
The prominenf 'actors in church and State had passed 
away. Augustine alone of the renowned fathers sur- 
vived. .The daughter of his cherished Paula, Eusto- 
chium, had died the previous year, and with her the 
brightest thread in his life was rent. He almost alone 
remains. Yet many signs appeared to indicate that 

* The Cathedral. Oxford: 1841. p. 297. 



LAST DAYS. 121 

the labor of his Hfe was not to pass away. His eye 
before it closes forever, perhaps looks upon his books, 
those friends that were never unkind or variable — 
upon his own manuscripts, the fruit of years of toil, 
his commentaries, his translation of the Scriptures, 
that darling child of his studies. In these thoughts 
the dying man might well feel happy. As he thought 
of his years of seclusion, he might deem himself nearer 
God by withdrawal from the world. But could he 
have seen gathering around him the images that his- 
tory must associate with him, what would have been 
tiie feeling of the expiring monk? Could his eye 
have been gifted with aught of the prophetic power 
that death is sometimes believed to impart, how it 
would have glowed with pride, as he looked upon that 
mighty order of men who followed him in the 
monastic life, who formed communities in all lands, 
and bore civilization to barbaric wilds, and kept learn- 
ing in sacred trust during the ages of darkness, who 
forced their doctrine of celibacy upon the church, made 
its ministers adopt their discipline, who rose in signal 
instances above tlie imperial throne, and wielded 
power such as was never granted to the sword of 
Alexander or the sceptre of the Caesars. Shall we 
not believe, too, that his eye would have darkened 
with something of horror, could he have seen the 
blacker forms in that monkish band who have morti- 
fied human appetites only to indulge preternatural 
passions, and who are to be blamed more than any 
others for stirring up religious wars, wielding the rack 
and kindling the fagot? Surely he would have had 
6 



122 JEROME AND HIS TIMES. 

little toleration for the degenerated age of monasticism, 
when retirement from secular observation was too 
often the shelter of gluttony and licentiousness. Sure- 
ly, too, he would have gloried in the thought of the 
innumerable students of sacred learning who were to 
follow in his steps and call him master. He who 
could refuse a mitre for the retirement of his cell, could 
not refuse the wreath placed upon his head by the 
Council of Trent in the precedence given to his Vul- 
gate Bible. Could he have looked into the cell of the 
monk of Wittenberg and seen the form of Luther 
bending with rapture over a copy of that same Vulgate 
Bible, and drawing from it principles that cast down 
so much of priestly despotism, and created a new 
civilization, perhaps the dying man would have found 
in his pride as a scholar something to console him for 
the wreck of many superstitions which he cherished' 
as a monk. 

But we have a more serious task to pursue than to 
deal in such imaginations. We are called to give 
some opinion of the character of Jerome's labors, and 
of his worth as a scholar, theologian and Christian 
man. 



V. 
JEROME AND HIS WORKS. 



As a man of letters, Jerome had no equal surely in 
the Latin church. He stands more than any other 
man as a connecting- link between the literature of 
the classic and the middle ages. Augustine nnder- 
stood better than he the philosophy and ethics of the 
old Greek and Roman civihzation, and dealt far more 
than Jerome with fundamental ideas. But with the 
classic literature in its own form and dress he had 
small acquaintance. He was not skilful in the use 
of the Latin tongue, provincial as he was, alike in 
birth and education ; of Greek he knew little, and of 
Hebrew nothing. Of these three languages Jerome 
was sufficiently master to enable him to enjoy and 
interpret their master pieces, whilst in the use of the 
Latin, he was so accomplished as to win, not without 
reason, from Erasmus, the unsurpassed Latinist of 
modern times, the name of the " Christian Cicero." 
Whether his family was of Roman origin or not, we 
are not able to say, nor whether from the nursery he 
learned to prattle in the Latin or lUyrian tongue, but 
it is certain that from his early childhood he was 



124 JEROME AND HIS WORKS. 

taught by a Roman teacher, and thoroughly drilled 
in the Latin language. If his family was of Illyrian 
origin, as is probable, it by no means follows that they 
had not adopted the language of the people who had 
for centuries governed them, and to whom Illyria had 
furnished many distinguished men, and more than 
once, as in the case of the Dalmatian Diocletian, 
given a monarch in one of her sons. What the 
original stock of the Illyrian tribes w^as, is somewhat 
uncertain. Some deem it to have been Sclavonic, 
others, like Mannert, and with greater plausibility, 
trace it to the Thracian family, and consequently to 
the Pelasgic races. If the Thracian family was in 
great part of Celtic blood, as w^e are told on good 
authority, it would not be difficult to trace that blood 
in the peculiar temperament of the saint, so sensitive 
and excitable, so keenly alive to praise and blamC; in 
style and spirit so often reminding us of Irish enthu- 
siasm and French volatility. 

His education was such as to bring him into close 
communion with the best literature extant. In Rome, 
Constantinople and the East, he had diligent^ studied, 
and upon its own genial soil he had devoted himself 
to the languages and letters of each great nation, who 
had held the empire of thought. It was a happy cir- 
cumstance that he flourished when he did — at a time 
when the classic literature w^as still taught in the 
schools, in its original purity, and before the barbaric 
invasions had done their destructive work with those 
literary monuments that had already lost their hold 
upon the ideas and affections of the people. Litera- 
ture always rests upon religion as its ultimate founda- 



THE VULGATE. 125 

tion, and as the leading minds and the popular feel- 
ings went over to the Christian church, the literary 
idols of the classic ages must fall. It was well that 
Jerome caught so much of their spirit, and breathed it 
through his translations and letters into the church 
of the middle ages. Rail as much as he would 
against the old poets, philosophers, orators and his- 
torians, he was always careful to treasure up their 
riches, and perhaps never showed his obligation to 
them more than in the very periods in which he set forth 
their worthlessness, and sent them all to the realm 
of darkness. The Latin Vulgate has undoubtedly 
had more influence upon the mind of Europe than 
any other book previous to the Reformation, and has 
had no small effect upon the translation and inter- 
pretation of the Bible since the Reformation. From 
Jerome the Yulgate has its chief characteristics. Of 
this there can be but little doubt, even if we accept 
the largest estimate that has been made in regard to 
alterations of that version since Jerome's day. To 
attempt a critique of the Yulgate is beyond our pur- 
pose, to say nothing of our abihty. To defend it from 
all censure would be folly. In some respects, it must 
be regarded as having done great harm to evangehcal 
religion, as in translating the Greek ixsifavovjaaTfs, agite 
poenitentiam, rendered in the Douay version so spe- 
ciously " do penance," and the Greek " £'7rcoi;tftov," super- 
substantialem, a rendering of the Lord's Prayer so 
favorable to Romish notions of the Eucharist. But 
surely none can deny to its style the praise of great 
richness and majesty, and to its renderings the credit 
of general fidelity and correctness, We must allow 



126 JEROME AND HIS WORKS. 

the translator the honor of singular independence in 
his mode of dealing with the apocryphal books, and 
of being unwilling to defer to the prejudices of the age 
and escape the denunciations of antagonists like 
Rufinus, by placing them among the canonical Scrip- 
tures. His study of the Hebrew language was of 
itself no small proof of his fidelity to the cause of 
sacred scholarship. The Hebrew was almost a pro- 
scribed tongue. For his devotedness to it, he was 
accused of an outrage upon the good name of the 
Seventy, of following a course unexampled by apostles 
and saints, and of preferring Barabbas to Jesus by 
becoming the pupil of the Jew Baranina. Augustine 
too dissuaded him from Hebrew studies, and besought 
him to be content with revising the old version by the 
Septuagint, and not alarm the churches by any dan- 
gerous novelties. The praise of a faithful scholarship 
far in advance of his age therefore belongs to the 
monk of Bethlehem. The earnest pursuit of know- 
ledge under difficulties is always noble. And to judge 
of Jerome's merit as a Hebraist, w^e must not estimate 
his difficulties by the standards of our own day of 
philological appliances. The grammar of the Hebrew 
had not begun to be written, the Masoretic text had 
not been settled, and the Chaldee Targums with the 
poor interpretations given in the Mishna, constituted 
the monk's pliilological apparatus. How far de- 
ficiencies could be supplied by the living voice of the 
teacher, we cannot definitely say. But surely Bara- 
nina could not well teach miore than he knew, and 
his knowledge could not have been great when mea- 
sured by the standard of a Schultens or Gesenius. 



HIS COMMENTARIES. 127 

It would be very strange if with a temper like his, 
Jerome did not claim full enough consideration for his' 
own Hebrew renderings. He is unquestionably some- 
times unjust to the authors of the Septuagint, and 
prefers in some instances a poorer translation to that 
given by them. Yet the position which he occupied, 
and the qualifications which he possessed, could not 
but give many advantages over the Alexandrian inter- 
preters, and enabled him certainly to aid Christians in 
their controversies with Jews by affording a more cor- 
rect understanding of the Old Testament in its rela- 
tions to the New. Such men as Stilting claim almost 
supernatural infalhbilit}^ for Jerome's Hebrew. It is 
enough for us to turn to Father Simon's* more candid 
pages, and learn from this Catholic scholar's admis- 
sion that the translator of the Vulgate is by no means 
free from error. We are perhaps safe in saying with 
Le Clerc and Von Colin that Jerome learned as he 
was, never attained to a scientific knowledge of 
the principles either of the Greek or the Hebrew 
Grammar. 

As a commentator, Jerome deserves less honor than 
as a translator, so hasty his comments generally are, 
and so frequently consisting of fragments gathered 
from previous writers. His merit however is, and this 
was by no means a common one in his day, that 
he generally aims to give the literal sense of the pas- 
sages in question. He read apparently all that had 
been written by the leading interpreters before him, 

■^ E. Simon, [Histoire, Critique du Vieux Testament, T. I. pp. 
244— 24y, 25.7—259, 393—397. Eotterdai/i, 1685. 



128 JEROME AND HIS WORKS, 

and then wrote bis own commentaries in great haste 
without stopping to distinguish liis own views from 
those of the authorities consulted. He dashed through 
a thousand hues of the text in a single day, and 
went through the Gospel of Matthew in a fortnight. 
He sometimes yielded to the allegorical methods of 
interpretation and showed frequent traces of the influ- 
ence of his study of Origen. Yet he seems not to 
have inchned to this method so much from his own 
taste as from the hahit of his time. And if of the four 
doctors of the church particularized by some writers, 
to Gregory belongs excellence in tropology^ to Am- 
brose in allegory^ to Augustine in anagoge^ to Je- 
rome is given the palm in the literal and grammatical 
sense. We cannot however exonerate him from fre- 
quent extravagances as a rhetorician and allegorist. 
Whilst few will with Erasmus dispute the verdict that 
assigns to Augustine the dialectic palm, few will deny 
that the grammatical doctor often rivals Gregory in 
his tropes and Ambrose in his allegories. Whether 
writing a letter of acknowledgment to Eustochium 
for a basket of cherries and a dove, or to Marcella for 
cups and chairs, or elucidating a prophetic vision or 
Gospel parable, he could exhibit a proficiency in find- 
ing double senses and mystic meanings, as far fetch- 
ed as anything in Origen, and an ingenuity more 
suitable for a desperate rhymester than a grave theo- 
logian. 

Rich and eloquent as liis style frequently is, he 
does not appear to have had very good taste as a critic. 
He had not that delicate appreciation of an author's 
meaning, that enables one to seize hold of the main 



THEOLOGY. 129 

idea or sentimentj and through this interpret the lan- 
guage and illustrations. He was not a master of re- 
productive criticism. He could not reproduce the 
thoughts of the prophets and poets of the Old Testa- 
ment, in his own mind, and throw himself into their 
position. Their poetic figures he sometimes treats as 
logical propositions, and finds grave dogmas in casu- 
al illustrations. His want of good taste in the morale 
of many of his allusions, we judge the more clem- 
ently from remembering the unnaturalness of his way 
of life and the effect of his habits of seclusion and 
mortification upon his notions of social propriety. 

As a theologian he cannot be placed among the 
foremost of his age, unsurpassed as was his influence 
upon biblical study and ecclesiastical life. As Nean- 
der has justly observed, his mind did not so much tend 
to unity as to details. He was never haunted like 
Augustine with the passion for ideal truth. Student 
of the Scriptures as he was, he puzzles us to learn 
what was his specific belief He is content to deal 
with the common places of established doctrine, and 
although he sometimes startles us as in his assertion 
that the clergy were originally equal, and that faith 
in Christ is the rock of Peter, the foundation of the 
church, with an almost Protestant freedom, he rarely 
departs from the general belief except to incline the 
more to monastic superstition. He* obviously had a 

* Vide, T. IV. Com. in Malt. Cap. XVI. p. 74, 75. In Ep. ad 
Galat. Cap. IV. p. 273. Epist. LXXXII. ad Oceanum, p. 648. In 
Epist. ad Titum, p. 407. Epist. ad Evangelum, CI. p. 802, 803. 
It will be remembered that all our quotations are from the edition 
of Martianay. 

6* 



130 JEROME AND HIS WORKS. 

monk's jealousy of the secular clergy, and makes fre- 
quent allusion to their pride. In a spirit not unlike 
Luther's, he denounces their disposition to arrogate to 
their own official virtue the power that belongs only 
to God and his word. They who, like the German 
Rosier,* have endeavored to drag out a system of doc- 
trine from his works have had but sorry success. As 
a scholar, he was bold and frequently original. As a 
theologian, he was little better than a parasite, who 
lived at other men's tables. His views seem to have 
differed much at various times, and one, as Simon 
judiciously observes, must study his relation to his 
times and their strifes to account for the inconsisten- 
cies of his assertions. He leaned upon the prevalent 
power in most things, and when he felt the growing 
influence of Rome, he seems not so much from pru- 
dence as from the necessity of his nature, to have at- 
tached himself to her hierarchy. Hence, as well as 
for his monastic notions, the honor in which he has 
been held by Rome. Papacy has no benedictions to 
bestow upon independent thought, and has given to 
Jerome the aureola denied to Origen and Tertullian. 
The monk of Bethlehem clung to Rome like the 
misletoe to the oak, and about him monks and priests 
have gathered in awe and admiration like Druids 
about their mystic tree. 

As a theologian, he affirmed the doctrines of the 
Avortli of celibacy, the ascetic life and the use of relics 
and pilgrimages more than any others, and thus as a 
positive dogmatist he can meet with little honor from 

* Bibliothekder Kirchenvater, T. IX. S. 92— 233. Qaoted by 
Schroeckh, T. XI. p. 219. 



CONTROVERSY. 131 

Protestants, As an antagonist of heretics he was far 
more prominent, than as a systematic theologian. He 
was willing to rest upon the symbols of the councils 
of Nice and Constantinople like the other CathoUcs 
of his age. He was not so conspicuous for his defence 
of their fundamental doctrines as for the assertion of 
his monastic principles. Although it is not easy to 
draw out his opinions into a definite system, it is be- 
yond question that most of the views that were after- 
wards embodied in the papal creed lurk potentially 
among his pages, and that he did much to prepare 
the way for prayers to saints and honors to relics, and 
the whole array of priestcraft. His controversies drew 
from him his most elegant works ; but even in these 
his rhetoric goes far before his logic, his learning is 
more conspicuous than his discrimination. Schroeckh 
asserts no libel in classing him with those men who 
have read more than they have reflected. Philoso- 
pher, orator, philologian, dialectician, Hebraist, Grae- 
cist, Latinist; adept in three languages, though he 
might designate himself, without insincerity, the ver- 
satility of his endowments is small compensation in 
the view of a Protestant mind for his want of inde- 
pendent thought, and for the servihty with which he 
surrendered all his gifts to the service of monkish 
fanaticism. When as in his dialogues against the 
Pelagians, he enters the theological lists, we see at 
once his strength and his weakness. His work shows 
something of the grace whilst it borrows the form of 
the Tusculan (Questions, yet when compared with 
Augustine's tract on the same subject, betrays the vast 
difference between the discursive scholar and the close 



132 JEROME AND HIS WORKS. 

logician. In fact his doctrinal system had none of 
the definiteness of Augastine'Sj and stickler as he was 
for the merit of works of aasterity, he was not in a 
position to assail the fundamental doctrine of the pre- 
cursor of Arminius in the defence of human abiUty. 
How little of a champion of free elective grace he was, 
on the whole, Luther's estimate of him shows. Lu- 
ther should have spoken with more respect of the 
scholar to whom he owed so much in his scriptural 
labois, yet he had no slight grounds for the judgment 
recorded in his Table Talk : "Jerome should not be 
named nor counted among the teachers of the church ; 
though he was a heretic, yet I believe that he is saved 
through faith in Christ. He says nothing of Christ, 
since he takes only his name upon his lips. I know 
none of the fathers to whom I am so hostile as to 
Jerome ; for he treats only of fastings, diet, virginity, 
etc. If he would even make the works of faith pro- 
minent and urge them, this would be something ; but 
he teaches nothing, neither of faith, nor hope, nor love, 
nor of the works of faith." 

It is no easy task to portray a character so mingled 
as Jerome's. We may at once dismiss the fulsome 
eulogists, who Uke Martianay and Stilting almost 
deify him. We cannot go with the extravagant 
praises which Erasmus heaps upon him in a spirit 
and style so much hke that of the saint himself. As 
little satisfied are we with those who go to the opposite 
extreme, and call him like Isaac Taylor a mere intel- 
lectualist, or, like Yon Colin, regard sens.uality and 
vanity combined with superstition as the most promi- 
nent elements of his character. 



HIS CHARACTER. 133 

An intellectualist he surely was, if "gazing upon 
books and parchraents with fond and greedy satisfac- 
tion," could make him so. Yet he was more than a 
book worm. He was a man of intense feeling, and 
his chief works are full of the marks alike of his social 
sensibilities, his irascible passions and his devotional 
zeal. His intellect always worked with most efficiency 
when busied in writing to gratify a devout friend's 
desire of knowledge or to denounce an enemy of the 
church. Although not prone to ascend from facts to 
ideas, nor to soar into the realm of the higher imagi- 
nations, he breathes into his^learned pages a singular 
fervor, and relieves what else would be wearisome 
pedantry by a most exuberant and often eccentric 
fancy. 

In the moral elements of his character, he was far 
from being one of those whom a benignant nature as 
well as privileged education places among the saints. 
We wonder that so judicious and well read a writer 
as the historian Milner, should say of him that he 
appears never to have known the extreme conflicts 
with indwelling sin which to later converts have given 
so much pain. He had most unruly passions. His 
irascibility yielded not a jot beneath the austerities of 
his retirement, and the lusts which stained his early 
days never ceased to affect his imaginations after his 
habits were beyond the breath of suspicion. We need 
little wonder that with his peculiar temperament, he 
chose the ascetic life. His ardent religious sensibility 
would not allow him to lead a life of pleasure, and he 
felt no security from the allurements of the world 
unless removed from its vanities. At once eager to 



134 JEROME AND HtS WORKS. 

join in every theological strife, and keenly sensitive to 
every attack upon himself, he loved a position in 
which he could act freely upon public opinion from a 
covert which none could invade. He was as one of 
those creatures who live in a shell and are alike fierce 
in their attack and secure in their retreat. His very 
love of power would combine with his religious zeal 
and imitative tendency to lead him to the monastic 
life. Ill fitted to struggle v/ith men of sterner mould 
in the shock of aflfairs, he readily yielded to the in- 
fluence of the ascetic part}^, and, engrossed by their 
ideas, he gave more than he secured, and from being 
at first a follower, he became tlie leader of the oriental 
movement in the Western church. His love of study 
was of course gratified by the course which he took. 
In his books, in the vicinity of admiring monks and 
nuns, in a. retirement which at once inspired his 
visions and enabled him to dictate to the universal 
church, he found an enjoyment not to be found at 
Rome or Constantinople. From the most distant re- 
gions cases of conscience and questions of scholarship 
were submitted to him. Hedibia of Gaul besought 
him to clear up her difficulties in biblical study in a 
series of questions not a little puzzling even in our 
day, and a young French ecclesiastic came to him 
with tears, and entreated him to write to his mother 
and sister to live in the same house and not incur 
scandal by separate residences and clerical boarders. 

That he was fanatical, we must with Isaac Taylor 
certainly maintain, if fanaticism be the combination of 
malign feeling with religious enthusiasm. He was a 
fanatic at once of the scourge and the symbol, and 



HIS CHARACTER. 135 

under different circumstances might have become a 
fanatic of the banner and the brand. But he declares 
that he had no enmity to men, only to their errors, 
and that he neglected his own quarrels to take up 
those of God — a declaration made undoubtedly by all 
bigots and made perhaps sincerely whether by a 
Mohammed or Dominic — a Galerius or Bonner. That 
he would have wreaked his vengeance upon the per- 
sons of his adversaries had they fallen into his power, 
is not however probable, ferocious as is his invective. 
He calls himself the watch-dog of the church, and 
says that his duty was to bay at all her foes. But 
like all noisy quadrupeds of his class, his bark was 
worse than his bite. We like less than anything his 
mode of speaking of the dead who had crossed his 
path. He declares that Jovinian, the Luther of that 
time, in swinish indulgence rather belched out his 
spirit than expired when he died, " non tam emisit 
spiritum quam eructavit." He was not gifted with 
that nice moral sense that is so necessary an element 
in the religious character and so powerful a check 
upon fanatical tendencies. In his controversy with 
Augustine npon the allowableness of falsehood as in 
the case at issue between Peter and Paul, we cannot 
but recognize in Jerome the germ of that erroneous 
principle that bore its ultimate fruits in Jesuit expe- 
diency. 

That he was the Christian Cicero, may be said with 
some justice, if the saying means only that he was 
the most eloquent of the Latin fathers. We may re- 
cognize in him too something of the morbid sensitive- 
ness of the Roman orator, and may draw a parallel 



136 JERO)\rE AND HIS WORKS. 

between the revolution produced in the Roman mind 
by Cicero's importation of the Greek philosophy with 
that produced by Jerome in the Western church by 
his translation of the oriental theology. We may see 
too in both great beauty of expression combined with 
great force of invective, and find in the flatterer of 
Pompey and the denouncer of Antony, features not 
unlike those of the sycophant of Damasus and the de- 
famer of Jovinian. But Cicero had a mind of far the 
larger mould, and however imperfectly he may have at- 
tained his wishes, he aspired to see truth in its glorious 
unity, and had intimations of an immutable morality 
based upon the eternal law of God, such as never 
seems to have inspired the soul of the monk of Bethle- 
hem. The fancy is an interesting one that conjectures 
what course a man like Cicero would have taken had 
he lived under the Christian dispensation. He surely 
would have found something in the pages of St. John 
and St. Paul to save him from the superstitions of the 
man who has been praised so much as the heir of his 
eloquence. 

To us, Jerome seems to combine certain elements 
of character that may be found singly in various 
noted men. He had the patient scholarship and bril- 
liant rhetoric of Erasmus, without his good sense and 
taste, and the fiery zeal and copious invective of 
Luther, without his tender humanity and noble 
clemency. In his eulogium upon the ascetic life and 
the graces of virginity, he indulged in sentimental 
raptures, in a style not unworthy of Hervey, the 
flowery moralist of the tombs, whilst upon topics of 
merely philological learuiug, he often exhibits a dry- 



HIS INFLUENCE. 137 

ness of detail that tried the patience of good Father 
Simon, and led the critics of the seventeenth century 
to turn from his pages in despair. His wayward and 
petulant temper, his biting jest and shrewd insight, to 
say nothing of his bearing towards the sex to him so 
essential and so proscribed, reminds us often of Dean 
Swift, whilst in visions of angels and raptures of 
prayer and contemplation, his devotion must place 
him among those saints, who like Bernard and Fran- 
cis have thought heaven the nearer as earth and 
humanity were most despised. Collombet finds in 
him as the eulogist of Fabiola and Paula the precur- 
sor of that master of funeral eloquence, Bossuet, and 
couples his name with Gerson, as the condescending 
teacher of children. In his letter to Laeta upon the 
education of her daughter, the younger Paula, we 
cannot but take occasion for rejoicing that Fenelon in 
following his path of cehbacy, did not adopt his views 
upon the education of girls ; whilst in his mode of 
treating of married life and clerical follies, as in his 
letters against Helvidius, and to Eustochium and 
Rusticus and Nepotianus, we may frequently imagine 
to ourselves resemblances, that connect the name of 
the most ghostly of the ancient fathers with that re- 
cent magazine of satire and caricature, w^hose title is 
rarely mentioned in theological journals, and whose 
influence is anything but ascetic. 

We cannot leave the subject before us without sug- 
gesting a few thoughts that are prompted by this 
survey of Jerome's hfe, labors and character. He 
stands before us as the type of a class of men who 
have had and still have vast influence upon the church 



138 JEROME AND HIS WORKS. 

and world. That he was a monk in the modern 
sense of that term we are far from saying, for he lived 
upon principles very different from the rules of Bene- 
dict and Bernard. He was not in his mature years 
the advocate of solitary life, but of life in community, 
and of this too not under very rigid restrictions. Yet 
his whole soul was engrossed by the monastic doc- 
trine, and he resented nothing so much as an attack 
upon the superhuman sanctity of chastity. More than 
any other man^ he has tended to give the Roman 
church its monastic elements. He virtually laid the 
foundations upon which Leo and the two Gregories 
builded, and Paul IV. and Sextus V. labored to restore 
the papal hierarchy. What would the hierarchy have 
been without the cehbacy of the clergy, and what 
would the clergy have been without tlie monastic 
orders ? Behind the magnificent array of bishops, 
cardinals and popes, we look back to the recluse of 
Bethlehem as the most efficient advocate of the princi- 
ples that consolidated their power. 

What need of caution in considering the whole sys- 
tem of polity and theology thus based upon a false 
foundation. The whole papal creed shows the traces 
of those spectral, unearthly beings, whom Jerome 
has done so much to form and exalt. Placed in the 
most unnatural position, exiled from the mild charities, 
salutary discipline, and common sense education of 
social life, they were not in a condition to judge of 
man's true relations to God and his neighbor, much 
less to be the dictators of religious opinion. It be- 
hoves us to think very carefully whether the system 
of ritual and polity advocated not without considerable 






THE MONKISH CREED. 139 

learning- and piety in conspicuous quarters of the pro- 
testant world, and finding favor from not a few minds 
in this land of the Puritans, does not owe its peculiar 
characteristics to men who looked upon marriage as a 
desecration, and celibacy as the royal road to heaven. 
Let the divines of Oxford in their admiration of the 
fathers of the fourth century show up their notions of 
domestic life as well as of sacramental rites. With the 
homilies of Chrysostom and Augustine let them trans- 
late the letters of Jerome, and give their readers opportu- 
nity to see what monkish notions were rising into the as- 
cendant in those days. It is here that Isaac Taylor has 
found his impregnable position in his controversy with 
the Oxford Tractarians. He shows beyond question, 
that if Christendom is to follow the lead of the fathers 
of the fourth century, we must bow down in reverence 
before the preternatural glory of the celibate hfe. We 
join with him alike in his estimate of the morbid feel- 
ing of monastic system^ and its tendency to distort the 
mind, and pervert its sense of Christian truth. 
Jerome's pictures of himself lead us not at all to covet 
his state of emotion, and if it be the heart that is the 
ultimate source of rectitude in moral judgments, we 
cannot look to him for our faith or morals. Far dif- 
ferent the Messiah of the New Testament, far different 
the apostolic company. We should be sorry even to 
believe that any worthy husband and father living 
among those social relations which Jerome deemed so 
secular and distracting, were liable to be haunted by 
such visions of lust as tormented the monk's seclusion. 
Yet, the life of Jerome ought to make us reahze the 
vast power of self-denial. He was not indeed self- 



140 JEROME AND HIS WORKS. 

denying in all things, for even to the last year of his 
life he railed at heretics in. a temper singularly petu- 
lant, and even in his closing commentary upon Jere- 
miah he showed the ruling passion strong in death, 
alike hy the copiousness of his classic allusions and 
the vehemence of his invective against the Pelagians. 
Yet he subdued many desires that in him were very 
strong, and in his devotedness to sacred learning, he 
merits the gratitude of all earnest scholars. The class 
of men whom he represents, at last put the world un- 
der their feet by being independent of its luxuries, and 
beyond most of its indulgencies. Their thirst for 
power, we may not indeed covet. But, surely, as we 
read of their self-control, and their achievements, w^e 
may justly ask ourselves, whether we do not make 
ourselves too dependent upon fortune, and if it would 
not be much better for us to have a far hardier cul- 
ture, so that we might more readily live in the plainest 
manner, and in case of emergency surrender the usual 
comforts of life rather than bend the knee in syco- 
phancy or stoop to any sin or shame. We have no 
respect for the doctrine that claims exalted merit for 
celibacy as such. We have respect for the man who 
is willing for the cause of science or rehgion to sur- 
render the charms of a privileged home, and devote him- 
self to the vigils of the student or the exile of the mis- 
sionary, under circumstances which must compel him 
to forsake his purpose, or engage in it without wife or 
child either to share his anxieties or his rewards. One 
sentiment comes before us with peculiar force after 
reading the ancient eulogiums upon celibacy— a senti- 
ment of respect for those who forego marriage for the 



SOLITUDE. 141 

sake of true piety or charity, whether in the broad 
walks of philanthropy or at the quiet fireside — a 
sentiment of contempt for the vulgar notion that stig- 
matizes the ummarried because they are so, forgetting 
how often love for parents or brothers and sisters has 
kept a noble woman from leaving her father's home, 
and devotion to letters or religion has moved the 
scholar or missionary to forsake all else for science or 
for the gospel. 

One thought more, and we take leave of the monk 
of Bethlehem and all his brethern of the w^ilderness 
and the cell. They were men, and were driven into 
retirement by a feeling more orless active in all ages — 
not a little active now in some of its forms ; — that 
sense of the insufficiency of the world for the soul's 
needs, that craving for a joy and peace that the world 
cannot give. Who does not sometimes sigh for retire- 
ment — for that " lodge in some vast wilderness," of 
which the Christian poet so pathetically sings? This 
feeling seems now to be reviving among Roman 
Catholic Christians, and shows itself, moreover, in 
various forms of thought and association among Pro- 
testants, and even free-thinkers. In the mother 
country a movement has actually been made towards 
having monasteries under a form " suited to the genius, 
character and exigencies of the church of England." 
In our New England we might marvel at an Antony 
in his solitary cave, or a Simeon on his lofty pillar of 
rock. Yet modes of living akin to those of Antony 
are advocated by some ascetics in diet, and a school of 
thinkers have arisen who in their zeal for individuality 
of character and their jealousy of all that comes be- 



142 JEROME AND HIS WORKS. 

tweea the individual soul and God, place every man 
upon a peak of such lofty isolation and sublime ego- 
tism, that men seem but shadows, the world a 
phantom, and dispensing even with the mediation of 
Christ and the Gospel, the transcendental hermit goes 
beyond even the Stylite, and creates a solitude that 
even to him would have been intolerable. It is not 
strange that they who have lived within the atmos- 
phere of such notions, should have a yearning for the 
ancient church, that meets their craving by ministra- 
tions far more congenial with human sensibilities. 
There is nothing unaccountable in the obvious affinity 
between Romanism and ultra-spiritualism. : 

What turn, the dislike of existing things and the 
desire to come out from them, that shows itself in 
every age, will take in our day, we cannot predict, nor 
will we venture to say that there must be ere long a 
reaction against tlie prevalent dynasty of gold and the 
industrial arts. That ihe movement of Newman will 
be followed to any great extent we are far from be- 
lieving, nor do we believe that the great protest against 
the golden idol is to come from the school of Fourier, 
and that the coenobites of the Phalanstery are to dis- 
place those of the convent and monastery. We must 
be content with simple Christian principle, and at the 
feet of the Master be saved alike from subjection to 
the ascetic of the wilderness who was but his pre- 
cursor, and to the epicurean who can never be his 
follower. Among men and in full sympathy with 
their joy and sadness, we may have our hours of com- 
munion with nature and the God of nature. We may 
deem it one of the best blessings of our improved 



CONCLUSION. 143 

civilization, with its stable laws and gardian force, 
that we may have hours sacred to heaven and the 
soul without quitting the haunts of men ; that without 
seeking the wilderness we may have an energy and 
self-control, that shall prove us like the Baptist, neither 
the reed shaken by the wind nor the slave of soft 
raiment, and more than the Baptist, sharers in the 
full gospel of the divine kingdom, drinking of a living 
fountain, and sheltered by a tree of life which he 
foresaw but never found in the Judean wilds. Not to 
the wilderness, but to God in nature, the Word, the 
Spirit, we may go and tiiere find fresh zeal for action 
and new tranquillity after trials. 

Even in respect to privileged solitude w^e would not 
exchange our own home in this bustling century for 
the cave of Bethlehem or the cells of lona. 



VI. 

JOHN CALVIN AND THE REFORMED 
SYSTEM.^ 



We are all aware hoAV nobly Martin Luther wres- 
tled with the Papal despotism, and won spiritual 
liberty for himself and people in spite of the Pope's 
anathemas and the Emperor's legions. We have 
usually named him the great Reformer, given him a 
place with Columbus, and Faust, or Gutenburg, the 
three leaders of modern mind, as the champion of 
man's liberty to think and speak for himself. In him 
we see the Reformation in its early enthusiasm, 
spiritual liberty in the ardor of its first love. Who 
was to come after him, carry on his work with cool 
calculation and unwearied patience, and place his 
name second to that of Luther's among the Fathers 
of modern Christendom. We can tell very readily 

* 1. Das Leben Joliann Calviri's. Ein Zeugniss fiir die Wahreit, 
von Paul Henry, Dr. der Theologie, Prediger, und Seminar-Inspek- 
tor zu Berlin. Hamburg und Gotha, 1846. 

2. Histoire de la Vie, des CEuvrages, et des Doctrines de Calvin. 
Par M. Audin, auteur de I'Histoire de Luther. Paris, 1841, 



HIS DESTINY. 145 

who was the man, although Luther himself would 
have looked without doubt to a far different quarter. 

Ifj at the crisis of the Reformation, after he had 
burned the Papal Bull, braved the Imperial Council, 
and by the friendly violence of Frederick, his prince, 
was shut up in the pleasant castle of Wartburg : if 
from this mountain eyrie, which he called his Patmos, 
he had been dreaming like the seer of the ancient 
Patmos, upon the future prospects of the Church, 
conjecturing what would be its fortunes, and what 
strong man would rise up after him to carry out his 
work, he could not possibly have named the man. 
Erasmus, the scholar, and Melancthon, die theolo- 
gian, he knew well ; the eloquent Bucer, the intrepid 
Zwingle, the violent Carlostadt had already given 
promise of their future name. But not among these 
nor their pupils was Luther to find a second to him- 
self. Recluse of the mountain, you must look beyond 
these, beyond Germany for him. While you are 
enjoying a short breathing time from your labors, a 
mind is in training for a work, equal in extent if not 
in nobleness with yours. Of him, afterwards to be 
head of the church of Geneva, a prophet might well 
say all that the seer of Patmos heard the spirit speak 
to the angel guardian of the Church of Ephesus, 
alike of praise for devoted labor, and blame for for- 
saking the soul's first love. 

Turn from the monk of Wittenberg, at his musings 
and studies in the castle of Wartburg, and look 
toward Picardy, in France, a province remarkable 
for the feudal independence of its nobles and the 
sturdy manhood of its people, a province not sterile 
T 



146 CALVIN. 

in strong characters, having produced men as various 
as Peter the Hermit, preacher of the Crusades, Char- 
levoix, the Jesuit Missionary of America, Camille 
Desmouhns and Gracchus Baboeuf, the Revolutionists, 
Condorcet, the free-thinking philosopher, and Beran- 
ger, the poet of hberty. We are looking now for a 
mind superior to either of these, and suppose ourselves 
in the year 1521. In the noble household of the 
Mommors, in the town of Noyon, a poor boy, the son 
of a clerk with a large family and stinted salary, has 
found a kind home. The boy is twelve years old 
slender, pale, with prominent eyes, large forehead, 
and a temperament both bihous and nervous, indi- 
cating remarkable quickness and perseverance. His 
name is John Calvin. He is already destined for the 
Roman CathoUc priesthood, and at this early age he 
has shown so much promise, that the family who 
have befriended him have used their influence in his 
favor, so as to secure for him the income of a small 
benefice. He will not become a priest. The future 
has in store for him a far different course. It is our 
task to trace that course,— to speak of his prepa- 
ration, his work and its worth. 

We will not aim to review the works which we 
have placed at the head of this article. We suppose 
that between the two, the friends and enemies of 
Calvin will be satisfied. Audin is brilliant, but we 
fear very unscrupulous. Henry is somewhat of a 
partizan, but more reUable, and disposed to shun the 
errors of exaggeration which he so condemns in the 
French defamer of his paragon. 

The preparation— of this we will first speak. Calvin 



EARLY LIFE. 147 

had not, like Luther, to contend with poverty, nor 
like him to wrestle with fearful passions and sen- 
sibilities. His temperament was far more even, and 
his fortune far more smooth. 

His childhood was passed under the protection of 
a noble family, and before he was twenty years old 
he had received the income of two or three eccle- 
siastical offices, without being obliged to fulfil the 
regular priestly duties of either. When past the age 
of twelve, he was sent to continue his education at 
the academies of Paris. He did not go to his new 
school like the son of the Saxon Miner, on foot, with 
staff and knapsack, with a companion as poor as 
himself, to sino^ sono^s for his bread. He had for his 
companions two sons of his noble patron, and at Paris 
he found a comfortable, although a frugal home in 
the house of his uncle Richard, a locksmith. Here 
he carried on his studies in quiet, and when weary 
with study, he could go in peace to his little cham- 
ber, which overlooked a church, whose chants he 
knew would be sure to wake him in time for his 
morning lessons. He continued his studies at Paris 
until the age of twenty, giving particular attention 
to Latin, in which he became an accomplished writer, 
and to philosophy, in which he proved his char- 
acteristic preference for the logical acuteness of Aris- 
totle, over the glowing intuitions of Plato. He was 
preparing to complete his theological studies at the 
University, and enter the priesthood in regular course. 
During his preparation he had received the tonsure, 
as preUminary to taking priestly orders. 

But from reasons not fully known, whether from 



148 CALVIN. 

the ambition of his father, the growing trouble in 
the Cathohc church, or the secret antipathy of Calvin 
fjr the Papacy, or from all these reasons combined, 
he changed his course, and studied law, first at the 
University of Orleans and then at Bourges, where 
he continued until the year 1532, when his age was 
twenty-three. That which seemed an interruption 
of his theological career, proved to be its effectual 
continuance. The study of the law was a necessary 
step in the culture of the man who was destined to 
become not only the creed-mailer, but the law-giver 
of millions. While pursuing his law studies, more- 
over, he fell under the influences that led him to join 
the Reformers. Wolmar, who taught him Greek, 
was a German, imbued with the principles of Luther. 
He saw the true genius of Calvin, and found in his 
previous thoughts and experience, not a little to favor 
the plea in behalf of the Reformation. Calvin re- 
turned to theology. His illustrious teacher, the jurist 
Alciati, lost the most devoted of his pupils, the juris- 
prudence of France was deprived of one of its most 
promising lights ; the Protestant Reformation gained 
its chief dogmatist and lawgiver. What inward strug- 
gles or spiritual conflicts he went through, we cannot 
say. He only tells us, that whereas he had before 
felt sharper stings pierce his conscience, the more 
closely he looked into himself, solace and comfort 
came. '"'God, by a sudden conversion, subdued his 
heart and made it docile; for, age considered, it had 
hitherto been somewhat too hardened in such things." 
Before he began to study law, he had at times 
preached. He now appears to take every opportunity 
to diffuse his sentiments, first at Bourges, then at 



PREPARATION. 149 

Paris. He evidently hoped that the doctrines of the 
Reformation would prevail in France as in Germany, 
and that he should find in Francis I. a friend, such 
as Frederick of Saxony had been to Luther. But 
Francis had far other aims than the pursuit of truth, 
and persecuted the cause which his own sister zeal- 
ously favored. Calvin protested against the perse- 
cution. He who afterwards was to be one of the chief 
of persecutors, proved his first love for toleration by 
an edition of Seneca on Clemency, a treatise which, 
with his own classic commentary, combined with the 
wisdom of the Roman sage, he trusted would soften 
the royal heart. It was all in vain. He, too, must 
suflfer persecution. In the year 1533, at the age of 
twenty-four, he left Paris, and never returned but for 
a few months. The next year he left his native 
country forever. Unknown to him, his hour was 
drawing near — the time for his great labor, in a place 
where he was to be priest and lawgiver, Aaron and 
Moses at once. Two years were spent in study, 
intermingled with travel, during which he met Eras- 
mus at Basle, and visited the Duchess of Ferrara, in 
Italy. Returning in the hope of finding a quiet re- 
treat at Basle, in a canton of Switzerland, then and 
now the asylum of the oppressed, he seems to have 
stumbled upon his high destiny. The journey that 
brought him to Geneva is as memorable in the his- 
tory of modern Christendom , as was the Hegira of 
Mahomet to Medina in the annals of the Crescent. 

His work now begins. All his studies as lawyer 
and theologian, all his previous experience as author 
and controversialist had prepared him to perform it. 



150 CALVIN. 

In the month of August, 1536, a traveller from the 
quarter of Savoy, entered the streets of Geneva ; a young 
man of about twenty-seven, with a simple costume, pale 
countenance and dark and brilliant eye, took lodgings 
for the night at a hotel. The next morning he in- 
tended to pursue his journey. But he had been seen, 
and was not to be allowed to go. The city was in th^ 
midst of commotion civil and religious. As early as 
the age of Julius Cesar it had enjoyed republican free- 
dom and had lately passed through a severe struggle 
to recover its liberties from the usurpation of a Roman 
bishop and an Italian duke. For three years the 
citizens had cast off the yoke of despotism, and for 
about one year had openly avowed the reformed doc- 
trines under the preaching of Farel and Yiret, two re- 
fugees from France. These men, the one as remark- 
able for the violence as the other for the sweetness of 
his character, found it very difficult to retain the city in 
the position to which they had brought it. They were 
troubled on the one hand by the attempt of the Catho- 
lics to regain power, and the reluctance of the innova- 
tors on the other hand to submit to salutary order. In 
common with a large portion of the citizens, they felt 
the need of a man who could defend the city at once 
against ducal and papal tyranny and popular turbu- 
lence. The moment Viret cast his eye upon that pale 
young traveller, he felt that a good Providence had sent 
the needed man. In spite of his earnest entreaties to 
the contrary and solemn assertions of incompetence, 
Calvin was forced to remain. Farel so worked upon 
him by a solemn adjuration, that the traveller gave up 
his journey, and henceforth Geneva is his home. A 



AT GENEVA. 151 

city amid scenery of unrivalled beauty and sublimity 
becomes the abode of him whose name more than that 
of any other man has been usually connected with all 
'that is austere in theology and stern in morals. With 
Mont Blanc and the peaks of Jura before him, with 
Lake Leman at his feet, Calvin addressed himself to 
the great task of his life. 

Invited to be at once preacher and theological pro- 
fessor, he wisely chose the latter office ; for nature 
had not given him eloquence, and in the pulpit Fare 
and Viret were much his superiors in popular address. 
He saw at once the state of things in the city and the 
canton, and adopted measures in accordance. Years 
before his stern principles were embodied in a written 
code, he showed the spirit that animated him, by his 
unwavering hostility against the superstitions of pa- 
pacy and the laxities of liberalism. He was as deter- 
mined against all free-thinkers and free-livers as 
against popes and bishops. Measures little in accord- 
ance with our ideas of freedom were adopted. We 
read on the authority of a historian friendly to Calvin, 
that rules of most burdensome minuteness were 
enacted by the civil power' under clerical influences; 
as, for instance, a bride who went to church with her 
hair too much decorated was kept under arrest for 
three days, as also were two ladies who attended her, 
and she likewise who had dressed the offending head. 
Calvin claimed for himself and associates, as repre- 
sentatives of Divine truth, the right to keep watch over 
the conduct of all the citizens and to exclude from the 
communion all persons deemed unworthy the privilege 
eilher from there opinions or practices. He went too 



152 CALVIN. 

far for his quiet, if not for the interest of his church. 
He tried to exclude from their habitual privilege some 
of the most patriotic citizens, the old champions of 
civil liberty whose chief sin was their jovial manners 
and waggish speech. Strife rose, and grew until the 
ministers were ordered by the civil councils to change 
their course and dispense the communion as usual. 
Calvin was inflexible and refused to administer the 
sacrament at all to so perverse a people. He persisted 
in his course, until the people were called together by 
the syndics and the exile of the factious ministers was 
voted. " Very well," says Calvin, " it is better to obey 
God than man." 

An exile of three years followed — three years spent 
mainly at Strasburg in constant study and com- 
position, conference with MeJancthon and other lead- 
ing reformers, plans for the progress of the cause^ 
obdurate Geneva herself not being forgotten. His 
recall then came. He could not be spared from the 
city that had banished him. He yielded to the en- 
treaty, and in the year 1541, at the age of thirty-two, 
he returned to spend the remainder of his life. The 
particulars of those twenty-three remaining years I 
cannot trace. A few prominent points only can I 
touch. 

Calvin's first work after his return was to dictate 
a creed and code for the faith and discipline of the 
Genevan church. By these, combined and confirmed 
by the concurrence of the civil council, he became 
virtually, although by no means nominally, master 
of the city and canton. How strict his creed was, 
I need not say. As to his mode of church govern- 



GENEVAN CHURCH. 153 

ment, it was equally strict. Based upon Presbyterian 
principles, the power of discipline was lodged in a 
consistory of eighteen members, six to be pastors, and 
twelve to be lay elders, chosen from the civil councils, 
upon the nomination of the pastors. The whole 
plan shows great ability on the part of the framer. 
It is not easy to see how, under the circumstances, 
he could have contrived a system better calculated to 
save the church from the attacks of Catholicism, and 
the inroads of anarchy. It took the most radical 
ground against pope, bishops, and all distinctions 
between ministers, and at the same time was very 
conservative in its provisions for guarding against the 
usurpations of the civil power, and the commotions 
of the populace. The church had republican fea- 
tures, and yet was independent of the state. The 
state could not administer religious discipline, except 
when appealed to by the consistory, to punish the 
obdurate, who had slighted remonstrance and excom- 
munication. It was rather in the details of this sys- 
tem than in its general plan that evil existed. The 
plan itself indeed established too close a relation 
between church and state, but it was the minute 
supervision over conduct, and the austere standard 
of morals that made of it a gaUing tyranny to all not 
of the straitest sect in Geneva. 

The system of doctrine and discipline once estab- 
lished, was to be defended. Nov/ Calvin was to show 
what power was in him, and how far in his study 
and in the council he deserved to be ranked with an 
Ambrose, a Hildebrand, a Luther. 

The Catholic Church, so far as doctrines are cou- 
7* 



154 CALVIN. 

cerned, was his chief foe. He was her most bitter 
and clear-sighted opposer. In her eye lie was a child 
of Belial, a rank blasphemer, an unconsecrated pol- 
luter of the altar. In his eye she was the mother of 
abominations, as false in doctrine as corrupt in dis- 
cipline. He saw no beauty in her gorgeous worship, 
recognized no majesty in her priesthood, made sport 
of the doctrine of apostolic succession, whether in 
pope or bishops, and showed no grief that he, unlike 
Luther and the other reformers, had never taken the 
order of priest, under the auspices of a Romish bishop. 
After his return to Geneva, the great reaction in the 
Catholic church to recover its lost power appeared. 
The Council of Trent held its first seven sessions. 
Calvin was all eye and ear to what was going on. 
The whole matter controverted at the council, and 
afterwards settled and put forth as divine truth, was 
as familiar to him as the alphabet. In his " Antidote 
against the Seven Sessions of the Council of Trent," 
he struck a bold blow at the returning strength of 
Rome, and entered upon a warfare which has been 
waged by his followers ever since. Nature exhibits 
no enmities more bitter and persevering than that 
which has always existed between Calvinists and 
Catholics. 

This controversy Calvin waged with the pen. He 
was soon called upon to use or to direct far other 
weapons. He might be the foe of Rome, and yet 
remain a mere radical, leaving Geneva to laxities of 
opinion and practice more fatal than the Roman 
yoke. What shall he do in the crisis at hand ? The 
Canton of Geneva, about one sixth larger in territory 



HIS CONFLICTS. 155 

than the State of Massachusetts, is virtually entrusted 
to him. What course shall he take to control the 
free-thinking, and check the loose-living of the citi- 
zens, and bring them up to his notions of Christian 
order. Let the consistory examine, rebuke, and, if 
necessary, excommunicate all offenders against doc- 
trine or discipline, and let them who will not heed the 
church be handed over to the mercies of the civil law, 
a law breathing the very spirit of the Jewish The- 
ocracy, and coupling infidelity with murder, both in 
sin and doom. Shall Calvin succeed? Is there no 
manhood in Geneva that will not be put in leading- 
strings — no free thought, whose wings will not con 
sent to be clipped ? Is there none of the liberty that 
Paul preached, and which asked for no arm of flesh 
to enforce its faith? Yes, there is both manhood and 
free thought, however mingled with passion and error. 
A contest must come. Who will be victor in the 
fight? The exile from France, or the old patriot 
citizen — the despot of the dogma, or the champion of 
free thought? One or two sketches of scenes must 
illustrate the parties, and tell the result. 

The first scene shall show Calvin's mode of dealing 
with those whom he considered free-thinkers. He re- 
garded all persons as dangerous infidels who differed 
from his views of the Gospel in any important respects, 
and no infidels were to be tolerated. The scholar 
Castalio was exiled for asserting the freedom of the 
human will ; the theologian Bolsec was banished for 
insisting upon the merit of good works. One instance 
yet more signal was to arise and be connected with 
Calvin's name forever. When a young man of twenty- 



156 CALVIN. 

five, he had fallen in with a Spanish physician named 
Servetus, and had engaged to meet him in debate 
upon the doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus failed to 
meet him at the time appointed, from fear of being 
conquered, say his enemies, but from fear of beirig be- 
trayed to the civil power, he declared himself About 
twenty years pass, and while Calvin has been doing 
his work at Geneva, Servetus has been a wanderer 
over Europe, erratic and impulsive, but not immoral 
in his habits, yet in all his rovings, we beheve, true to 
his doctrine of the simple unity of God. On the 15th 
of July, 1553, he enters Geneva a weary and haggard 
traveller, and seeks a passage to Zurich. He is a 
fugitive from papal persecution, a refugee from the 
prisons of Vienna, where he had been put for his 
opinions, and was awaiting trial. Aware of the oppo- 
sition to him, he is imprudent enough to go to church, 
Calvin saw him, remembered him, and gave informa- 
tion against him in the Consistory. He claimed no 
power for the church over him, but left the case in the 
hands of the law, merely stating the extent of the 
Spaniard's heresy. The law was specific. In denying 
Christ to be eternal God, which he did in language 
of exceeding violence, Servetus had blasphemed in 
doctrine, and in assailing Calvin and his system he 
had shown a spirit of anarchy. Servetus was con- 
demned to die. Where was Calvin now? Author of 
a tract on Clemency in the day of his own persecution, 
where is his clemency now that a fellow-creature's 
life is in great measure in his hands ? Commentator 
on St. Paul, where is his memory for that passage, "If 
thine enemy hunger, feed him, if he thirst, give him to 



SERVETUS. 157 

drink ? Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with 
good." He does not stop the awful outrage. True 
that it is the civil law which passed the sentence; but 
whose mind framed that law? whose influence sanc- 
tioned it? What man was there of such command- 
ing station that he could have modified the terrors of 
the law by interposing a plea for mercy in behalf of a 
fugitive stranger, who came to Geneva an exile from 
Romish persecution ? What man was there who 
threatened to leave the city rather than have the pre- 
rogative of the clergy in regard to excommunication 
invaded, and whose decided purpose to stop an act 
of bloodshed might have been as effectual as that 
threat? But no, Servetus must die, and Calvin con- 
sents, and allows his sentence to be just. But, cry his 
defenders, Calvin declares that he was in favor of 
commuting the sentence ; yes, I have read that letter, 
yes, he is for commuting the sentence, oh, miracle of 
mercy ! for commuting the sentence from death by fire 
to death in some easier form. Let him have all the 
credit of that ! Let him have all the credit, too, of 
being willing to save Servetus, if he would only re- 
cant. Let Servetus, a lonely stranger among a thou- 
sand foes, let him have all the obloquy of being burned 
at the stake rather than deny his honest opinions, 
whatever those opinions may have been. His form 
of faith he confirmed whilst the flames were curling 
around him, by this prayer : " Jesus, thou Son of the 
Eternal God, have mercy on me !" He might have 
been saved could he have changed the order of the 
words, and called on the Eternal Son of God to save 
him. Let Calvin's own words explain the deed : 



158 CALVIN. 

"After the sentence of death was pronounced on him, 
at one time he stood like a person astonished, at an- 
other he gave deep sighs, and at others he shrieked 
like one affrighted by apparitions ; and this increased 
upon him until he continually cried out, ' Mercy, 
mercy !' " At the stake, " Farel with difficulty extorted 
from him his consent that the assembly should unite 
with him in prayer. In the meantime, although he 
gave no sign of repentance, he did not even attempt 
a word in defence of his opinions." Not a word in 
defence there? Alas! the stake is a poor place for 
argument when every other plea has failed, and death 
gleams not merely from the faggot but from the faces 
of a fanatical crowd. This deed was done at Geneva 
under the auspices of John Calvin, second of the Re- 
formers in name. Emancipated Christendom ! where 
wasthat liberty that w^as your first love? Exile from 
France, how could you think of your own past 
sufferings after that? How could you see in benig- 
nant nature the face of a merciful God ? — how look 
upon Luke Leman's placid face, image of heaven's 
own rest ? — how lift your e3^e to Jura and Mont 
Blanc, everlasting altars to him the Almighty and 
all-loving ! 

With the death of Servetus the power of heresy 
was broken, for few dared risk his fate. An import- 
ant enemy still remained in the leaders of the old 
patriotic party, called by Calvin Libertines, on account 
of their liberal ideas and their free living. They had 
fought the battles of liberty, and had small anticipa- 
tion that Geneva would be freed from Duke and 
Bishop to fall under the yoke of a French refugee. 



PERRIN. 159 

Some of these men led loose lives, some haunted tav- 
erns, and indulged in coarse jests about the long- faced, 
saffron-hued theocrat, and gave his name to their 
dogs. Calvin saw his foes, measured their strength, 
and prepared for the conflict as for the crisis of his 
cause. It is an important issue — and one often to be 
renewed in other countries — it is no longer Hildebrand 
against the emperor, or Luther against the pope, but 
a more modern scene : the austere minister against 
the populace and their favorite leaders. Who will 
win? The conflict comes to a point between Calvin 
and Perrin, a brave cavalier of the old school, far 
more versed in battles and story-telling than in meta- 
physics or theology. Calvin called him the mock Cae- 
sar, and he called Calvin the hypocrite. The struggle 
between them continued thirteen or fourteen years ; 
Perrin's aim was to deprive Calvin and the consistory 
of the power over disciphne, and to transfer the power 
of excommunication to the civil council. Already, in 
the early stage of the struggle, Perrin had been once 
imprisoned for his rebellious course, and Calvin showed 
that he had physical as well as moral courage, by 
going boldly in the midst of a mob, and awing down 
the populace, who were infuriated at the outrage upon 
their favorite. Perrin recanted, but only to wait a 
better time. Years afterwards the time came. One 
of the patriot party who had been excommunicated 
by the consistory appealed to the council for redress, 
and with Perrin's aid the appeal was successful, and by 
a vote the council took to itself the power of excommu- 
nication. The whole fabric of the Genevan Church 
is thus in danger ! Where is Calvin ? He does not 



160 CALVIN. 

shrink from his post ; he stands his ground bravely ; 
and here he, in principle, is right. The power of 
spiritual discipline belongs to the Church, and not to 
the State. He openly declared in the pulpit, " for my 
own part, I will suffer myself to be slain, rather than 
allow this hand to stretch forth the sacred things of 
the Lord to those who are lawfully condemned as de- 
spisers of God." Yet, in the afternoon, he declared 
himself not disposed to resist the civil power, and that 
he must leave the city if the council persevered. This 
stand alarmed his friends, and discomfited his enemies ; 
the order in council was reversed ; Perrin with his 
friends was banished. Henceforth Calvin reigned in 
Geneva, victor over papist and heretic, free-thinker and 
patriot. 

Seven years afterwards he died, aged fifty-five, hav- 
continued to preach until two months before his de- 
cease, and showing to his last breath the same zeal 
for the doctrines and discipline of the Church. The 
week before his death he invited his brother ministers 
to a supper at his house, as was usual previous to the 
communion. He was carried from his bed to the ad- 
joining room, when he said, " I come to see you, my 
brethren, for the last time, never more to sit down with 
you at table." He offered prayer, ate sparingly, and, 
then, was borne away to his bed never to rise again, 
saying with a smiling countenance, " this intervening 
wall will not prevent me from being present with you 
in spirit, though absent in body." Tranquilly he died, 
the attendants hardly discerning the passage from 
life to death. 

By his own request no monumental stone was 



HIS CHARACTER. 161 

erected in honor of his name. In the words of his 
friend and biographer Beza, charity may perhaps say : 

'Twas modesty, his constant friend on earth, 
That laid the stone unsculptured with a name ; 

Oh I happy turf enriched with Calvin's worth, 
More lasting far than marble is thy fame ! 

He died and his work remained. What is its 
worth? I regret that so few words must suffice to 
answer this question. His worth is measured by his 
character and the principle he set in motion. 

What was his character? In intellect clear and 
logical, not beguiled by fancy, nor exalted by imagina- 
tion, he stands in the front rank of deductive thinkers, 
a prince among those system-makers who starting 
from certain principles carry them out to their strict 
conclusions. He was a remorseless logician, not 
modifying by collateral instincts or sympathies the 
deductions of his understanding. He was not deterred 
from his sober purpose even by superstitious feelings 
or wayward fancies. He never saw devils as Luther 
thought he did, and never brought the allegorical con- 
ceits of his time to the interpretation of Scripture. 
His intellect was as cool as an experienced lawyer's, 
as patient, as persevering in establishing principles 
and applying them to cases. He had much trouble 
in his sometimes irritable temper and was not unwill- 
ing to confess the failing. Yet his difficulty in this 
point came more from irritable nerves than from a 
deeply impassioned nature. He had none of Luther's 
glowing fancy, little of his love of natural scenery, his 
passion for music, his delight in the arts that adorn 



162 CALVIN. 

the home and the altar. He had an intellect by 
nature Puritanical, and it cost him little effort to ex- 
chg,nge au imposing cathedral for an ungarnished and 
uncouth conventicle. Luther was much more of a 
Catholic churchman, and in his view of the Lord's 
Supper he showed the mystical element in his nature, 
by recognizing a real presence of Christ in the elements 
which Calvin regarded merely as emblems divinely 
blessed. The two never met, yet this was the point 
at issue between them. 

In heart he was conscientious, faithful to what he 
deemed his duty, not ardent in his affections, more 
prone to pride than vanity, tending to substitute for 
the law of love the law of fear. His piety was more 
the prostration of a subject before a sovereign than the 
communion of a Son with the divine Father. His 
charity to men was shown mor^ in what to his mind 
was the greatest beneficence in efforts to impress doc- 
trines and urge duties than in free sympathy or 
generous brotherhood. In his personal friendships he 
was unlike Luther, a much cooler friend and more de- 
liberate opponent. He could not weep like the Saxon 
in agony over a child. His letters after the death of 
his father, his wife and his only child show, little of a 
breaking heart. His pen turns easily from the mourn- 
ful theme to write of other thinsrs. If his idea of 
woman is to be taken from his own description of the 
qualities needed in his wife, a good nurse is the ideal 
of the sex. The fact that his constitution was 
nervous and sickly may excuse such an opinion. 

In active power, he was more the student and the 
adviser than a man of executive will. He was nerv- 



BIGOTRY. 163 

ous and timid and naturally retiring-, with little dis- 
position or gifts to move him to be forward even in a 
sphere so quiet as the pulpit. In his study, he could 
be the theologian, the lawyer and the statesman. He 
did not love the market-place, the council or the social 
hall. Necessity seemed to make him what he was, the 
theocrat of a new Israel. Yet no necessity could 
change his nature, or give him the warm blood and 
heroic will of Luther. Luther's weapon was the 
broad-sword fiercely wielded ; Calvin's the well-tem- 
pered rapier adroitly handled ; or perhaps the battle-axe 
of Richard and the Damascus blade of Saladin might 
better indicate the militant qualities of the two. 
Luther charged the enemy like Murat with a bravery 
that wins shouts of admiration even from their ranks. 
Calvin is the cold, planning tactician overlooking the 
contest and making deep plans to lead the whole to 
the issue needed for his aims. By the Catholics 
Luther is called a madman and Calvin a fiend. We 
are content with calling the one the heroic champion, 
the other the creedmaker and disciplinarian of the 
Reformation. 

Was Calvin a bigot and persecutor ? Much more 
so than his defenders allow, but not more than the 
ideas of his age warranted. He v/as not more cruel 
than most of his compeers, but he had the power and 
disposition to translate into deeds the principles, which 
they — even Melancthon himself among them asserted 
in words. In toleration and humanit}^ he falls below 
Luther, below the ancient fathers ; below Augustine, 
his model, whose heart was inflamed with charity as 
well as zeal ; below Ambrose, whose mighty crosier 



164 CALVIN. 

was lifted against the destroyers of the Spaniard 
PriscilUan, as against the arrogant Emperor Theodo- 
sius ; far below Paul his favorite apostle, defender of 
love as of faith ; far, far below the standard of Him 
who had angels at his command, but preferred rather 
to suffer than to inflict pain, allowed his majestic brow 
to be torn with thorns, and his spotless hand to be 
outstretched upon the cross and pierced with nails. 
There was blood on the Saviour's hands it is well 
said, but it was his own. There was blood on Cal- 
vin's hands, but alas, it was his brothers. Let us 
beware of condemning his bigotry in a spirit baser 
even than bigotry. If we mistake indifference for 
charity, if we care more for a silver dollar than for a 
Christian doctrine, we are unworthy to censure a man 
who like Calvin was willing in attestation of his 
faith to bear the same pains that he would have in- 
flicted upon others. But if we are worthy of our 
privileges, worthy of this soil that has never been wet 
with the blood of religious persecution, worthy of our 
liberal faith whose chief defender interposed between 
an atheist and the civil law, unwilling that a hoary 
infidel should be punished for his blasphemous sayings, 
if we feel mercy and still love truth, then may we 
speak, though more in sorrow than in anger, of the 
bigot spirit of John Calvin. 

We may speak of this, and none the less remember 
his earnest fidelity and self-denying toil — his good 
services and salutary influences. His great doctrine 
was, the sovereignty of God. This was the centre 
from which his five points sprang, even as the pecu- 
liarities of Luther sprang from his views of faith. 



DOCTRINE OP ELECTION. 165 

God is sovereign — man is rebellious ; God's will is 
law — he elects at pleasure those who are to be saved, 
redeems them by his partial favor from their doom, 
regenerates them by irresistible grace, and secures 
their final perseverance. This doctrine created a 
mighty race. The elect, or those deeming themselves 
such, felt a divine arm under them. They formed a 
kingdom of saints above the world — a republic of 
brethren equal with one another. Without some such 
system to work upon the minds of the believer, it is 
difficult to see how the liberties of the middling classes 
could have been won and sustained. The doctrine, 
however discouraging to the sinful, strengthened the 
faith of the Christian with something of the force of 
fatalism, and made men confessors in peace and 
heroes in war. The republic of saints was the idea 
that struggled bravely against the laxity of the world 
and the tyranny of the priesthood — made the plebeian 
Roundhead victor over the lordly Cavalier — sent forth 
the pilgrim band to cross the ocean, like a new 
Israel over another Red Sea. and has laid the founda- 
tions of modern freedom. Happy will it be, if the 
idea of the republic of saints is not, too, entire ly done 
away — if we learn its lesson of truth, without its 
arrogance and contempt— happy if its borders are so 
extended and so limited as always to exclude from 
power men benighted by ignorance or darkened by 
crime. 

Yet this doctrine of election and total depravity 
has led to many evils as well as blessings, in respect 
to personal religion, church and state government, 
literature and general life. If its statement of man's 
imbecility and God's predestinating will has checked 



166 CALVIN. 

human pride and exalted the divine sovereignty, it 
has sometimes led the alleged non-elect to despair, 
and the alleged elect to substitute for the pride of self- 
reliance, the arrogance of favorites of heaven, and to 
disparage good works to honor faith the more. In 
government, both in church and state, if it has taken 
power both from despot and demagogue, to give it 
to the republic of saints, it has sometimes made the 
yoke of brethren as galling as that of lords. If in 
literature and art it has invigorated the understand- 
ing and practical energies, it has stripped life of much 
of its poetry, sacrificed the usual helps of faith in its 
estimate of divine decrees, damaged music and poetry, 
slain architecture, robbed nature and life of much 
beauty, enclosed the fountain of salvation with a five- 
barred fence, and pruned the tree of life of its lovely 
foliage, in order to trim its exuberant branches into 
the form of the theological pentagon. But none who 
see the influence of Calvin's system of government 
upon modern society, now that his excesses are done 
away, will revile his name. His name is perhaps too 
little honored. Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists 
all disclaim him. Few of the Presbyterians, the sect 
most faithful to him, adopt all his dogmas. His own 
Geneva is now in Unitarian hands, and the Geneva 
of Nev/ England, Boston, is no longer Calvinistic. 

Yet, of late, an attempt is made to revive his influ- 
ence. Great names at Geneva, and in Scotland es- 
pecially, aided here, are combining in the work. A 
society has been organized wholly for the republica- 
tion of his works, whilst his name has been brought 
n to new prominence, by the remarkable biographies 



CONCLUSION. 167 

from the pen of his learned eulogist, Henry, and his 
briUiant and unscrupulous defamer, Audin. Nothing- 
now in the religious world is more marked than the 
aUiance of all who bear Calvin's name in the new 
crusade against the pope. Where is our place in the 
conflict ? With neither ; we bow down neither to the 
mitre, nor the dogma, whoever may wear the one, or 
proclaim the other. Our stand is upon the free Gospel 
of Christ. We commend Calvin's effort to unite 
Church-order with Gospel-liberty, but mourn that in 
his search for order he fell into tyranny, and left his 
first love. 



VII. 

TERESA AND THE DEVOTEES OF 

SPAIN* 



In point of romantic incidents, striking characters, 
and significant movements, the sixteenth century- 
yields to no other age since the Apostles. To present 
even a faint outline of its prominent events or persons 

* 1. Obras de la Gloriosa Madre Santa Teresa de Jesus, Fundadora 
de la Reforma de la Orden de Nuestra Senora del Carmen, de la 
Primitiva Observancia. En Madrid. 1793. 2 vols. 4to. 

Works of the Glorious Mother St. Teresa de Jesus, Founder of 
the Reformed Order of Our Lady of Carmel of the Primitive Rule. 

2. Cartas de Santa Teresa de Jesus. Con Notas del Exc.'^° y 
R.'"^" Sr. D. Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Obispo de Osma, del 
Consejo de su Magestad. En Madrid. 1793. 4 vols. 4to. 

Letters of St. Teresa de Jesus, with Notes by Palafox. 

3. CEuvres trese-completes de Sainte Therese ; Des CEuvres com- 
plites de S. Pierre d' Alcantara, de S. Jean de^ la Croix, et du 
Bienheureux Jean d^Avila, formant ainsi un tout hien complet dt la 
plus celebre Ecole ascetique d' Espagne. Paris. 1840-1845. 4vols. 4to. 

Complete Works of St. Teresa, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. John 
of the Cross, and the Blessed John of x\vila ; forming thus a very 
complete Whole of the most noted Ascetic Schools of Spain. Trans- 
lated by various hands and Edited by Migne. 

4. Vie de Sainte Terese. Par F. Z. Oollombet. Lyonet, Paris. 
1844. 12mo. 

Life of St. Teresa. By CoUombet. 



SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 169 

would exhaust the Hmits of our article, instead of 
furnishing a brief introduction. It is enough, after 
thinking of that imposing array of princes, prelates, 
theologians, saints, martyrs, discoverers, heroes, to 
close our eyes to the historic page, and allow the 
various forms to arrange themselves in order as they 
will, and march in grand procession before the imagi- 
nation. Far in the van, the precursors of the mighty 
host, appear Gutenburg and Columbus, leading on the 
future as with magical power, — ^the one, by the me- 
chanism that gives wings to thought, the other, by 
the discovery that startled the Old World from its 
complacent slumber, and opened a new hemisphere to 
its bold adventurers and in time to its independent 
thinkers. Preceded by such heralds, the host draws 
near, at first seeming a confused mass, but soon pre- 
senting three nearly distinct divisions. At the head 
of one walks the monk Luther, with all the stout 
Teutonic heart beating beneath his cassock, the mod- 
ern Hermann against the modern Rome ; at the head 
of another marches, with military step, the soldier- 
saint, Loyola, with the blood of Spain boiling in his 
veins, the new Cid of a new crusade. In the rear, 
and in the interval between, stands another company, 
led by the man of middle courses, the wavering Cran- 
mer, backed by the bluff Henry, and guiding on Eng- 
land and her mighty future. Thus Germany heads 
the movement, Spain the reaction, whilst England 
aims for the middle ground. The end is not yet. 
Which of the three tendencies will finally prevail the 
historian must leave it to the prophet to decide. 

We turn now to Spain as it was in the sixteenth 
8 



170 TERESA. 

century. She alone of the great powers of Europe 
shared but Httle in the spirit of the Reformation. Our 
common ecclesiastical historians have scarcely a word 
to say of her Protestant Reformers, whilst the volumi- 
nous Schroeckh dismisses the subject in a few passing 
paragraphs,* narrating the murder of Diaz, the mar- 
trydoms of Pontius, Gonsalve, Cazalla and his fol- 
lowers, and the imprisonment of the Canon of Seville, 
Foncius, and the Archbishop of Toledo, Carranza, 
two distinguished theologians whose association Avith 
Charles V. in his retirement led to the strange report 
that the monk-king himself inclined to the Lutheran 
doctrines in his last days. Yet the little of the reform 
spirit that appeared was soon suppressed by the In- 
quisition, and; in the opinion of Schroeckh, would 
hardly have appeared at all but for the connection 
established with Lutheran Germany by the imperial 
court. 

Thus Spain, after the eventful interval of a thou- 
sand years, was faithful to the prestige with which 
she first appeared in the annals of Christendom. In 
the death of Priscillian, the Spanish soil was stained 
with the first blood shed by Christians for opinion's 
sake, and thus in the fourth century the bigot Idacius 
and the tyrant Evodius displayed traits which found 
fit imitators ages after in the Dominies and Torque- 
madas of the Inquisition. The Spaniard Theodosius 
carried to the imperial throne a spirit not unlike that 
of Charles Y., and the great Council of Constantino- 
ple, held in his reign, may be named as a forerunner 

" Seit der Reformation, II. 791-800. 



SPANISH CHARACTER. 171 

of that of Trent. Spain, too, fmnished the prince who 
gave the fatal blow to Arianism, and the Goth Recared 
was a man of the reaction, like his terrible successor, 
Philip IL, who reigned a thousand years after. 

In some respects it seems unaccountable that Spain 
should be so far (by three centuries surely) behind the 
other nations of Europe. In the Middle Ages, her peo- 
ple were remarkably independent, and led a life as free 
as Scottish Highlanders. Yet the pressure of the Moors 
upon them for so many centuries tended to neutralize 
all religious differences, to unite them in a burning 
fanaticism against the Moslem, and thus prepare them 
to enter with all the unity of a single militant church 
upon the century in which Germany, France, Eng- 
land, and even Italy, were rent by hostile factions. 
With a strong sense of personal dignity in civil mat- 
ters, the Spaniard became in respect to religion the 
slave of utter absolutism. Catholicism has wrought 
this paradox. "In the Middle Age an element of 
liberty, and since the sixteenth century an element of 
reaction, it has," says duinet, "imprinted this double 
character upon the mind of Spain." 

The leading characters of the Romish movement in 
Spain are not in danger of being neglected by modern 
historians. Ferdinand, Isabella, Ximenes, and Charles 
y. have been portrayed by more than one master- 
hand, whilst students of history now wait anxiously 
for the publication of a work on Philip IL from one 
whose name stands for ever identified with the annals 
of Spain.* It is our purpose now to deal with a lead- 

* We are glad to possess the work on Spanish Literature, so 
much needed and so long expected. The old pupils of Professor 



172 TERESA. 

ing spirit in the reaction, whose claims have been 
generally overlooked by Protestants, — one who brought 
to the Roman see, not the aid of sword or dungeon, 
axe or fagot, but the fervor of a flaming piety and the 
sacrifice of a devoted life. We speak of her not un- 
worthily named with Isabella, as wearing her mantle 
of zeal and power. To whom can we refer but to 
Teresa of Avila, honored by popes with the title of 
Doctor of the Church, and revered by devotees as the 
illumined teacher and the elect exemplar of the hfe 
of prayer ? 

We pursue this subject with more than a general 
historic interest, not only on account of the genuine 
zeal and power of her life, but because she reflects so 
fully in her various works the spirit of the Cathohcism 
of her time, and enables us to see clearly the good 
and the evil that are the legitimate fruits of the system 
which absorbed her whole soul. We cannot say that 
she was as wax beneath the seal of Rome, for she 
had too much intrinsic vitality to be compared to any 
thing so passive. She was rather hke the vine that 
climbs around the marble column, and in its growth 
takes its form from the stone to which it clings. We 
have never appreciated so fully the genius of Roman- 
ism as from the study given from time to time, for a 
year or two, to the pages of this saint of the flaming 
heart. 

We have been guided chiefly by the work named 



Ticknor can never forget his course of lectures. The mere outline 
or syllabus which we have preserved is a better guide to the 
student than Bouterwek or Sismoudi. 



VARIOUS EDITIONS. 173 

third upon our list, — Migne's four volumes upon Te- 
resa and the ascetics of her school. We cannot say 
much in favor of the French Abbe's editorial fidelity, 
except so far as good proof-reading is concerned. 
Without any explanatory notes, without even naming 
the translators to whom he is indebted for the several 
versions, without giving us the literary history of the 
various editions before published, he has collected in 
one huge mass all that most nearly concerns the Saint 
and her associates. We had supposed that the Life 
by Villefore inserted here was a new production, un- 
til we learned from another source that it was first 
printed in 1712. However, such omissions as we 
have noticed are easily supplied, and we are greatly 
indebted to Migne for bringing together so much 
valuable matter in so cheap and available a form, 
and with such correct printing. By comparing, as 
far as we are able, the French versions given by him 
with the Spanish originals named first and second on 
our list, we find, that, although the meaning is in 
general faithfully given, the style is much altered, 
often completely Frenchified^ and the homely, unaf- 
fected, and often awkward sentences of the saint have 
been drilled into the dancing step of the French rheto- 
ricians of the age of Louis XIV. The letters, in them- 
selves more smooth and colloquial, are better ren- 
dered than the treatises. We will not try to name 
the various editions of her works since the first, which 
appeared in 1588, six years after her death. The 
most desirable is that of Madrid, 1793, of which the 
only copy in the country, as we are led to believe, is 
in Harvard College Library, and of this copy we have 



174 TERESA. 

been able to avail ourselves. As to translatioQs, they 
are numberless, especially in the French language ; 
yet CoUombet and his coadjutors think there is room 
for a still better version than any extant, and have 
devoted themselves to the labor. The English ver- 
sion by Abraham Woodhead (2 vols. 4to., 1669) we 
know only by name and by scattered quotations. 

Of the nine or ten biographies of the Saint that 
have any name, that by herself is of course the most 
valuable, notwithstanding its abrupt and unskilful 
method. Its very faults reveal her character, and re- 
lieve us of the suspicion that she is writing for effect, 
or under the dictation of ghostly inquisitors. Adding 
to her autobiography the Life by Villefore, patient and 
faithful, yet rather heavy, and the sketchy but very 
instructive Memoir by CoUombet, and we are able, 
with such hints as her own works afford, to form a 
pretty good idea of Teresa and her times. 

Turn we now to Old Castile, that central province 
of Spain, so long the disputed territory between Chris- 
tian and Moor, and taking its name from the strong- 
holds that were built upon its domain to keep off the 
invader. We select as our starting-point the year 
1522, a date strongly marked in the annals of Chris- 
tendom. There was a momentary lull in the great 
tempest that had been rising over Europe. Then 
Luther was in his mountain fastness, his Patmos, 
busy with the Scriptures and meditating a return to 
Wittenberg with new weapons from their invincible 
armory. Then, too, Lo3^ola, laid up for a season by 
his wound, was passing, in his sick room at his father's 
castle, through a conflict sterner than that of the fight 



EARLY LIFE. 175 

of Pampeluna, and, exiled by lameness from battle- 
fields, was inflamed by mystical visions to organize 
and lead forth a mililia of the cross. Of Luther and 
Loyola the family of Alphonso and Beatrix da Cepeda, 
in Avila, then knew nothing-, yet were not strangers 
to the spirit that was brooding over the waters which 
bore the Christian ark in that eventful period. In the 
year spoken of, this goodly household, which in the 
course of time rejoiced in as many children as Jacob 
had sons, even the patriarchal twelve, was alarmed 
at the sudden disappearance of two of the ^^ounger 
children, a girl of seven years and a boy of about the 
same age. One of their uncles was put, among others, 
upon the track of the little runaways, and at last 
overtook them at some distance from the city. He 
demanded of them the reason of their strange con- 
duct, in thus running from home with their odd col- 
lection of provisions. They told him, with great 
simplicity, that they were going to find the country 
of the Moors, to preach to them the cross and win the 
crown of martyrdom, and thus escape the eternal 
torments of which they had heard so much. The 
uncle unceremoniously bade them have done with 
their nonsense, and go home to their mother. She, 
good woman, although a great zealot in her way, 
scolded them soundly, and dried her tears. The bro- 
ther, like another Adam, threw the blame upon his 
sister, and said that she had urged him to take the 
journey. The little girl could not deny the charge. 
Unconsciously she v/as preparing for herself an illus- 
trious career. This was the first step towards saintly 
honors ever taken by Teresa, the most noted woman 



176 TERESA. 

of the Catholic Church in the country, beyond all 
other, zealous for the faith, — the country called the 
very land of fealty, ^^ terra obedienticE." 

The decided rebuke thus received did not wholly 
daunt the httle devotee. With her brother she piled 
up stones in the garden, and called them hermitages, 
while she amused the little girls who came to see her 
with making monasteries and playing the nun. She 
caught this spirit from both parents, who were very 
devout. Her mother's death, which occurred when 
Teresa was about twelve years old, made a great im- 
pression upon her, and moved her to pray the Blessed 
Virgin to be to her a mothei'. 

But not even the tears of bereavement, nor all her 
Ave Marias could save her from temptations incident 
to her sex and country. Her good mother with all her 
love of such books, as the Golden Legend, Spiritual 
Garden, and Lives of Saints, had quite a passion for 
romances, and this was not without influence upon 
the susceptible daughter. She became a devourer of 
stories of love and adventure, and her young heart 
doubtless beat fast as she read of the prowess and 
amours of Amadis and Florisando. A companion of 
like age added to this disposition, and led her into a 
passion for dress and all the vanities of the world. 
The grave father saw with sadness the change, and, 
too chivalrous to prohibit the worldly friend from 
visiting the house, sent his daughter at fifteen to the 
Augustinian convent in Avila, at once to pursue her 
education and renounce her follies. At first she was 
ill at ease among the nuns, but soon their tenderness 
and zeal won upon her affections, and recalled all the 



RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS. 177 

piety of her childhood. One of the sisters did much 
to cheer her spirits and stimulate her faith, during the 
year and a half of her residence there. This tender 
ministry was succeeded by the sharp discipline of dis- 
ease. Brought on partly by the influence of seclusion 
upon a delicate constitution, and partly by the violence 
of her mental conflicts, she fell into severe illness, and 
was obliged to quit the convent first for her father's 
house, and afterwards for the country-seat of her elder 
sister, Maria. Here, apparently, her career as a recluse 
was at an end. Her health could not endure seclu- 
sion, and her father was determined never to part with 
her. But life is always full of surprises, and the trials 
that promised to end virtually began her monastic 
career. 

Her youth may be regarded as passed, and she now 
enters upon the course that has given her a name in 
history. The decisive step was taken in part from the 
impression left upon her mind by a visit to her uncle 
Pierre, a man noted for his devout life and studies, 
but in greater part from the writings of that singular 
being who has won such fame alike for his learning 
and his superstition, and has exercised over the female 
heart for centuries the same influence that turned the 
heads of the Roman ladies of the fourth century, — the 
Monk of Bethlehem. Over the story of nearly twenty 
years of her life, strangely mingled with devotion and 
doubt, rapture and despair, but devoid of true peace, 
we might well write as a fitting title the name of 
him who never taught and never found true peace, — 
Jerome. 

^ 8* 



178 TERESA. 

She, who at the age of seven stole away from home 
with one of her brothers to convert the Moors, at 
eighteen left her father's house with the same secresy, 
and early one morning, attended by her brother, pre- 
sented lierself at the gate of the Carmelite Convent of 
the Incarnation in Avila, bent on a sterner sacrifice 
than that of martyrdom. 

" Sed te manet suavior 
Mors, poena poscit dulcior, 
Divini Amoris cuspide 
lu vulnus icta coucides."* 

By this step she decided her destiny. Henceforth, the 
life of this impassioned girl was to be identified with 
that monastic Order, which, professing to derive its 
sanction from Elijah of old, who made Carmel his 
favorite haunt in the tenth century before Christ, was 
founded by Berthold of Calabria on that loveliest of 
sacred mountains, in the twelfth century after Christ. 
From the sierras of Spain the ascetics on the hills of 
Palestine were to meet with the most fervent response^ 
and the revolutionary sixteenth century was to repeat 
the monastic enthusiasm of that noontide of Popery, 
the twelfth century. Teresa chose this convent on 
account of her friendship for one of the sisters, and 
the regularity of life within its walls. Her father no 
longer withheld his consent, and, yielding to her per- 
severance, resigned her, as he deemed, to her Saviour. 
The gay senorita is now the demure novice, given up 
to the labors and devotions of the convent, and, as 
she pleasantly says of herself, employing sometimes 

* Breviary, Pars Autumualis, Oct. xv. 



CONFLICTS. 179 

at the broom the very hours given of old to amuse- 
ment and vanity. Bat in spite of her zeal, so great 
as to lead her to surpass her associates in the rigor of 
her observances, and her charity, so tender as to move 
her to nurse a poor ulcerous nun from whom the others 
shrank in disgust, she suffered painful doubts and 
passed through fearful conflicts. Yet she never utterly 
despaired, and the light that flashed as from heaven 
upon her soul was hailed as a miraculous message to 
cheer her on in her course. On the 3d of November^ 
1534, she pronounced her vows. 

Still she was not at peace, either in body or mind. 
Wretched health combined with miserable misgivings 
to torment her. She was evidently sinking under 
the pressure, although the sweetness of her temper 
was unharmed by all she underwent. The relaxed 
rules of the Carmelites had not continued in force the 
primitive method of entire isolation, and, at the in- 
stance of her friends. Teresa withdrew from the 
cloister, and, under the medical attendance of an old 
v/oman, who seems to have been a sorry quack, she 
passed several months, chiefly with her sister Maria, 
in the country. She evidently thought little of the 
medical aid afforded her, and sought eagerly good 
books and good advice for her soul. She quite won 
the heart of the priest, her confessor, although the 
chief spiritual advantage seems to have been received 
by him. He told the young devotee of his amours 
with a woman whose arts had completely entrapped 
him,* and rebuked by counsel from such a quarter, he 
renounced the connexion, and within a year died, as 
was thought, in the odor of sanctity. Her illness 



180 TERESA. 

found no relief. For several days she was thought 
to be actually dead, and her grave was prepared in 
the grounds of the convent. She regarded this ter- 
rible crisis as the result of her father's unwillingness 
tbat she should endure the fatigue of confessing. She 
was in such a sad condition, that she could be moved 
only in a large cloth held by two persons, each at one 
end. As soon as she thought herself slightly relieved , 
she begged to return to the convent. There for three 
sad yet not desolate years, she lived in prayer and 
suffering, an utter cripple. Then she began to enjoy 
new strength, and, in general, felt tolerably well. 

Now the demon of whose cunning and pertinacity 
she has so much to say laid in wait for her, and as she 
thought, turned the happiness of convalescence into 
a fearful danger to her soul. Friends of course came 
to congratulate her upon her recovery, and the inter- 
views at the grated window proved sometimes more 
attractive than the devotions of the cell. Who the 
companions were whose society was so fascinating 
the saint does not tell us ; although the manner in 
which she speaks of one person, without specifying 
the name, leads us to suppose that this bride of heaven 
was not wholly free from human sensibilities. A 
vision of the Saviour with an expression of severity 
on his countenance concurred with the illness of her 
father to rebuke her distraction and win her back to 
prayer. Yet even her father's death, which took 
place in 1550, was not sufficient to establish all her 
aflfections upon heavenly things. She lived over vir- 
tually the life of the monk of Bethlehem, and scenes 



Augustine's confessions. 181 

of social enjoyment and visions of saints struggled 
for the mastery of her imagination. 

After twenty years of conflict, her heart appears 
to have come under a new influence, and to have 
risen into a higher peace. The ghostly Jerome, whose 
epistles had driven her into her early novitiate, now 
retires into the background, and she comes within 
the influence of that noted father of the ancient Church 
so celebrated for ministering to troubled minds out of 
his own perplexed experience. Somewhere about the 
year 1553 she took up the Confessions of Augustine. 
Reading these burning pages with prayer for the 
saintly writer's intercession, she melted into tears 
as she came to his account of the walk in the garden, 
and of the voice that called him to renounce the 
world and live for God. She heard the same voice, 
and the heart of the poor nun, moved as never before, 
appears to have been led by the great Numidian to 
stand for the first time upon cheerful Evangelical 
ground. 

The name of Augustine, then, might be deser- 
vedly written over the second portion of her career, as 
that of Jerome over the first. For twenty years' 
wandering, as with John the Baptist, in the wilder- 
ness of ascetic penitence, she now found herself at 
her Saviour's feet, and rivalling the Magdalen her- 
self in the fervor of her penitence and the flame of 
her piety. Her new religious experience, so peaceful 
and so rapturous, puzzled her own mind as much as 
it did the sage doctors whom she consulted. Her 
first two advisers thought the whole a device of the 
devil, but recommended her to consult a priest of the 



182 TERESA. 

famous Company of Jesus, which had just founded a 
college at Avila. The Jesuit Padranos understood 
her case better, and prescribed for it with remarkable 
wisdom. " Oh !" writes the Saint, " what a wonder- 
ful thing it is to understand a soul ! " He counselled 
her to reflect daily upon the humanity of Christ, and 
meditate upon the divine fulness of his tender charity. 
Soon after, — this was in 1557, — a greater than Padra- 
nos gave her the same important advice; none other 
than the noted Francis Borgia, who had just return- 
ed from a visit to the imperial solitary, Charles T., 
afforded her the benefit of his counsel and the light 
of his peculiar experience in the spiritual life. Her 
next confessor, Ferdinand Alvarez, carried out the 
spirit of these counsels, and advised her especially to 
implore directly the influence of the Spirit to remove 
the remains of the carnal mind. He urged her to use 
often that noble hymn. 

'' Veni, Creator Spiritus," 

a hymn which none can fervently repeat without good, 
and which led the heart of Teresa to new fervor and 
assurance. It now flames up in the raptures of pray- 
er, and her autobiography becomes a glowing treatise 
upon the four steps in the devout life. 

Now came troubles from a new quarter. Relieved 
from the worst part of her mental distractions, the 
poor nun was sorely tried by external vexations. 
The story of her experience was noised about among 
all the pious gossips of the town, and soon made her 
painfully conspicuous. Her diiector was advised to 
put a check to her illusions, and was induced to re- 



HER ADVISERS. 183 

strict her attcDdance at that hallowed table which 
was the source of so much of her inspiration. There 
is something very touching in the language in which 
she appeals to her Saviour for consolation at this tr}?-- 
ing time. Left to herself, without friendly solace, and 
taught even to distrust her own soul and Divine influ- 
ences, she turned to him who came to be the Com- 
forter. "O my Lord ! indeed you are the only true 
friend ! and how powerful, since you can do what you 
will ! and you never cease to will, if you are entreat- 
ed ! Although all the learned rise up against me, all 
created things persecute me, demons torment me, 
may you not desert me. Lord, since I have expe- 
rience of the gain which you have in store for all who 
put their trust in you !"* At these words, peace re- 
turned to her, and a voice seemed to come from 
heaven : — " Have no fear, my daughter, since it is I, 
and I will not leave you ; fear not." 

She needed now a wise and experienced adviser, 
and thought herself happy in the aid of Balthazar 
Alvarez, a Jesuit, who was her confessor for a long 
time. But her singular experience, her visions now 
of angels and now of hell, left her in some perplexi- 
ties which even his art could not remove. It was 
well that Pierre of Alcantara, one of the chiefs of the 
Franciscan Order, noted alike for his charity and de- 
votion, brought to her rehef the aids of his veteran 
experience in spiritual conflicts. The old man com- 
forted the Saint greatly, and from specimens of his 
mind given in the third volume of Migne's collection, 

* Obras, I., pp. 204, 205. Vida, C. XXV. 



184 TERESA. 

we cannot but own that the counsel of so benevolent, 
self-denying, and wise a man must have been valuable 
to any one in trouble. Without doubt, the mfluence 
of this good Franciscan led Teresa to attach more 
value to a life of practical usefulness, and tended to 
cure her of a part of that morbid self-consciousness 
which habits of secluded introversion create. The 
mind is like the body, and the director of consciences 
may learn a useful lesson from the blunt physician, 
who, when drugs failed to cure the dyspeptic, prescribed 
the oil that exudes from an axe-handle when in full 
play at wood-chopping, and the patient was cured. 
St. Francis has done service to the Catholic Church 
by his practical, benevolent spirit, and for this we pre- 
fer him to Dominic, whom Dante ranks with him as 
ordained in chief to escort the lieavenly bride, the 
Church : — 

" One, seraphic all 
In fers'sncy ; for wisdom upon earth 
The other, splendor of cherubic light."* 

The seraph burning with love we prefer to the cherub 
radiant with light, especially when the light, as in 
Dominic, is polarized into dogmatic lines and borrows 
infernal heat from inquisitorial flames. Yet we must 
confess, that, in the two specimens given by Migne 
severally of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders, 
there is much to verify the words of Dante. The 
Franciscan Peter of Alcantarat writes from a heart of 
love, whilst the venerable John of Avillat exhibits a 
calm and sober wisdom, which shows that the Domini 

* Paradiso, Canto XI. t A. D. 1499-1562. t Died, 15G9. 



CONVENT AT AVILA. 185 

can rchools may sometimes sharpen the understanding 
without blunting the sensibilities. John of Avila, 
whom Teresa sometimes consulted, and whose 
works here fill a quarto of over six hundred pages, 
appears much more like a modern man than his as- 
sociates, and reminds us often of the more scholastic 
of our fervent English divines. 

But the shades of Dominic and St. Francis were 
both to conspire in the great enterprise that marked 
the remaining years of Teresa's life. Leading minds 
of both these Orders sustained her in her plan for the 
reform of the Carmelites according to that primitive 
rule which had been, as she thought, so sadly relaxed 
since the Bull of Eugenius, A. D. 1431. Convinced 
that prayer, silence, close retirement, and penance are 
the four pillars of the spiritual life, she long meditated 
the reform, and at last, in 1560, with the cooperation 
of a young nun, pupil at the convent of Avila, and a 
religious widow much prized as a friend, she under- 
took to procure a house to which the three might 
retire from the world, give themselves to prayer, and 
by their devout example begin the work of reform. A 
great hue and cry was at once raised against these 
women who seemed to be setting themselves up as so 
much better than their companions. Every possible 
obstacle was cast in their way. At last, however, the 
house was purchased, and the requisite repairs and 
alterations were commenced. After many delays and 
perplexing interruptions, during an interval in which 
the Saint visited Toledo, and, at the order, of the 
Dominican Ibanez, awhile her confessor, wrote her 
own Life, the work was completed, and on the 24th 



185 



TERESA 



of August, 1562, with pen.ussiou from Pms IJ , Ae 

Oouvent of St. Joseph was -"-^ <^'^' ^^^'l,*^,,^; 
placed upoa the altav of the chapel for the fust ttme 
tsinV-onasetry with a nun and fottr nov>c^s was 
Til thft as yet existed to represent tl- g -t f otm 
Their garb was as unassuming as then immDei 
The d'ess was of black serge, the head was covered 
!^h course linen, and they wore sandals instead o 
Is Bttt a beginning was made, and the uproa 
at was raised throughout the vrcn.ty P'-'ed ha^ 
e deed had not been done in a corner, and would 
not Require to be trumpeted by its authors, so busy 
^er Fcachers, monks, and prelates irx enortncmg U 
nndacltv For six months the storm lasted, and at 
: t me'it seemed that the new convent with tts four 
p aying women would be destroyed by the mob. Te- 
^S herself was ordered by her Superior to returr^ to 
the o d convent of the Incarnation, but in Decembei, 
1563 was permitted to go back to that of St. Joseph 
the seat of the reform. Now came an interval of 
ca m and in July, 1565, Pius IV. gave his sanction to 
1 e^'ode of rules prepared by the Saint for her monas- 
tery Let it be remembered, however, m passmg, that 
.e, most noted treatise, the Way of Perfection, was 
."itten during the period of her troubles, at the end of 
1 f^^3 or the beginning of 1564. 

We annot follow her in all her efforts to carry out 
her projects of reform, nor describe her various trials 
and r iumphs. She leaves us in very little doubt a 
Tth main object of her enterprise. In the work just 
quid «'- ^1-ks very plainly of the -joa s mad 
by Protestants upon the peace of the Chuich, and 



HER EEFORMS. 187 

takes her stand boldly with the party of re-action. 
Conversant as she had been with the leading- men of 
the great reUgious orders, she was well advised of the 
state of Christendom, and resolved by asceticism and 
prayer to bring to the defence of the Church a power 
which the fagots of Philip and the daggers of Charles 
IX. vainly sought to wield. Prayer was to her mind 
the great weapon of the Church militant, and by it 
she hoped to bring discomfiture upon its foes, and 
open new springs of consolation and energy to its 
defenders. Yet her heart yearned also for the conver- 
sion of the heathen, and a visit from Father Maldo- 
nado, just returned from the East Indies, gave her 
such views of the wretchedness of the idolateis there 
as moved her to new devotion in her cell and fresh 
zeal for reform. 

She seems, indeed, to have no objection to harsher 
modes of dealing with heretics, and speaks of the 
dungeons of the Inquisition as matters of course, in 
about the same way as we speak of a jail or prison 
for criminals. She, however, employed ministrations 
of no such ungentle character, and no harsh deed is 
ascribed to her instigation. Against her will ap- 
pointed Superior of St. Joseph's, she made it her mis- 
sion to estabhsh similar institutions wherever she 
could. All the great cities of Spain soon bore monu- 
ments of her zeal. The monks of the Order of Car- 
\ mel caught something of her enthusiasm, and, led by 
I the famous John of the Cross,* whom she met in 1567, 
[ when he was a restless zealot but twenty-five years 

* 1542-15i)l. 



188 TERESA. 

old, they began, like her nuns, to return to the primi- 
tive rule. This personage is one of the most singular 
characters that we have ever met with in church his- 
tory. His works, which Migne inserts so largely in 
his third volume, answer fully to the account given of 
his hfe. He was the very Sybarite of asceticism, and 
took an Epicurean delight in penance. He seemed to 
rejoice in living among graves, and his spirit is a 
pecuhar blending of the erotic and elegiac, — at once a 
mystical Anacreon and Simonides, or a Tom Moore 
and James Hervey, singing of the beatific marriage 
in the damps and gloom of sepulchral cells. He was 
as exquisite in his apparatus of mortification as ever 
was a Lucullus in his gardens and banquets. He 
filled his rooms with crosses and death's-heads as 
eagerly as ever any Catullus painted his walls with 
roses and Cupids ; and spoke of apartments too low 
to permit the occupant to stand, with as much pelasure 
as a Pericles or Trajan would describe the loftiest of I 
his halls. His treatises, such as his " Dark Night" 
and " Ascent of Carmel," are a strange mixture of love \ 
and logic, tears and tropes. They are theological 
dissertations and devout ejaculations strung upon a 
mystical love-song as a connecting string. He com- 
ments with especial delight upon the Canticles, and 
with an ingenuity that might well drive such allegori- j^ 
cal interpreters as Dr. Gill to despair. Yet there is j 
much to respect in his works, — much tender piety and '\ 
spiritual insight. Teresa helped him greatly, and '^ 
probably made an efficient reformer of a sensitive 
creature who might else have wept his life away in 
tears of contrition and homesickness. This mystic 



CLOSE OF LIFE. 189 

recluse, also, was of some service to the Saint in sus- 
taining her spiritual elevation throughout her pressing 
external cares, and his influence undoubtedly appears 
in the work written by her after his imprisonment, the 
"Castle of the Soul," in which her mystical flights 
rival those of Madame Guyon, and have utterly baffled 
the skill of some of her translators. 

She lived five years after composing this work, and 
then died, in 1572, at the age of sixty-seven, in the 
midst of her labors, during one of her expeditions for 
carrying out the Carmehte reform. Notwithstanding 
her miserable health, her heart was never more at peace 
nor her spirit more elastic than during this journey. 
The three previous months she had passed at her 
loved home, St. Joseph's of Avila, once more Superior 
of that convent after a long removal to a less congenial 
sphere. The strifes between tlie two orders of Carme- 
htes, of the milder and the more rigid rule, had been 
harmonized. Seventeen religious houses of the re- 
formed rule had been established by her eneigy, not 
including the fifteen founded by John of the' Cross. 
Her journey was now almost a triumphal march, as 
in her old age and amid snow and ice she turned her 
face towards Burgos, where she founded her last 
monastery. In some places her carriage was beset by 
such multitudes as to block up the way, and the nuns 
in Palencia sang the Te Deum as she approached. 
It needed ah her huraihty to receive such honors 
meekly. How lowly and cheerful her temper was is 
proved by her reply to a companion in the expedition, 
who spoke to her of the saintly reputation she had ac- 
quired :— " Three things have been told me,— that I 



190 TERESA. 

was good looking, that I had talent, and that I was 
saintly ; for some time I was disposed to beUeve the 
two first and I have made confession of such pitiful 
vanity ; but as to the third, I have never been fooUsh 
enough to beheve it for a moment." 

Eager to return home from Burgos, she was per- 
suaded to visit the town of Alva, at the urgent request 
of the Duchess, and there was seized with fatal illness, 
and soon died. Her death was in the spirit of her 
life. Receiving the communion and extreme unction, 
she gave clear responses to all the prayers, repeating 
constantly the words,—" At the last, Lord, I am a 
daughter of the Church." Resting her head upon the 
arms of her favorite nun, and clasping in her hands a 
crucifix, she sank peacefully to rest, with her eyes 
fixed upon this image of her Saviour. This was on 
the 4th of October, 1572, or by the New Style, which 
dates from that day, October 15th. No wonder that 
the scene so acted upon the imaginations of the de- 
votees present at the death-bed. Some saw a lumin- 
ous globe ascend from the body, and others beheld a 
dove fly from the cell and mount to heaven, whilst a 
celestial fragrance filled the place. 

Who can help associating the place of her death 
with that proud Duke from whose title the town took 
its name, and who died within the same year? 
Teresa and the Duke of Alva,— leaders in the great 
reaction against Protestant Reformation,— in history 
thus associated, — in character how different, the man 
of blood and the woman of prayer ! The traveller 
who looks upon their monuments, as he visits Alva, 



HER WORKS. 191 

can need little help to connect them with thrilKng as- 
sociations. 

We pass now to a brief survey of Teresa's works. 
These are voluminous,— filling- six quartos in the 
Spanish, and nearly three closely printed quartos of 
the French edition. They may be regarded as form- 
ing three classes :— those of a personal nature, such 
as her memoirs and correspondence, — treatises, among 
which the " Path of Perfection" and the " Castle of 
the Soul" are the chief,— and lastly, official papers, 
consisting of the ^'Book of Foundations," instructions 
to her nuns, and a portion of her letters. It is out of 
the question to try to give a review, or even an outline, 
of them all. Nor is this necessary, as the same spirit 
pervades all her writings, whether theological, reli- 
gious, or ethical. She had little of the pride of author- 
ship or the fear of criticism, and wrote always either 
in obedience to a director or to meet some especial oc- 
casion. Hence there is nothing of the elaborate 
structure and methodical division in her productions 
which make the reviewer's task easy. The best idea 
of her writings will be given by sketching their chief 
traits. 

Her theology, although never presented with logical 
definiteness or analytic fulness, is very obvious. She 
is a thorough-going Roman CathoHc, and trusts im- 
phcity in the doctrines, priesthood, and rites of the 
Church. Hence her impunity after her severe exam- 
inations. Had she been less obedient to Rome, her 
pietism would have drawn down upon her far worse 
terrors than priestly counsel or a few months' seclu- 
sion. Like Madame Guyon, she awakened the sus- 



-jg2 TERESA. 

picions of the piiesthood, and had she insisted as little 
as the French Quietist upon the power of the sacra- 
ments, she would probably have figured in an auto da 
fe or have pined away in the dungeons of the Inquisi- 
tion As a theologian, she belongs to the raystioal, 
not the logical order, and received the Catholic doc- 
trines with her affections and will, without apparently 
subjecting them to any searching analysis. With her 
whole soul, she trusted in that one rite which gives 
the Papal Church its power, and without which Rome 
sinks at once to the level of Canterbury and Geneva. 
The sacrament of the mass, the real presence in the 
communion, was to her the essential of worship, and 
her most enraptured hours were connected with this 
mystical sacrifice. . 

Hence, obviously, the character of her religion may 
be inferred. She was from an infant a child of the 
Church, and her religious experience had been wholly 
under its guidance. All the poetry of her soul was 
associated with its ritual and history, its sacred 
seasons and holy persons. Implicit obedience, entire 
faith, fervent prayer, were to her the essentials of the 
. reli<Tious life. But prayer was the great essential. 
She seems more at ease in using the language ot 
prayer than that of conversation or letter-writing. 
Thus like a bird of the air, she soars more easily than 
she walks, and it seems a relief to her when she can 
take to her wings. Her writings constantly rise into 
prayer, and the style has generally new majesty and 
purity as she pours out her soul in penitence or adora- 
tion. Generally, her style has disappomted us ; yet 
frequently, as in her devotional passages, we have 



PRAYER 193 

proof that she spoke the language of CervanteSj and 
did not dishonor the country that gave birth to Q,uin- 
tihan, and which once in the purity even of its Latin 
surpassed the successors of Cicero, and in the eighth 
and ninth centuries sent Latin teachers to Italy. 
When treating of prayer, she speaks also with more 
analytical discrimination, as well as more eloquence, 
than when treating any other topic. Invariably in 
her works the same view of the progressive stages of 
the devout life is presented or implied. In her auto- 
biography she makes her idea of the four modes of 
prayer more clear by one of those simple comparisons 
which she was so fond of using. She compares the 
soul to a desolate tract of land that needs to be weeded, 
planted, and watered, so as to be a pleasant garden to 
the Lord. It is by prayer that the dry land is water- 
ed and made pleasant and fragrant to the senses. 
The water may be conveyed in four ways, — either by 
drawing it laboriously from the well, or by raising it 
by a wheel and distributing it through conduits, or by 
turning the waters of a brook or river, or, lastly, by an 
abundant shower, which at once supersedes all 
anxious effort on our part. The first method corres- 
ponds to mental prayer, which consists in a labored 
effort to collect the thoughts. This is the most trying 
season of the Christian, and needs much patience and 
perseverance. Thus devotion begins its course. 
Then comes the prayer of quietude^ which is a pro- 
found recollection of the three powers of the soul, — 
memory, understanding, and will. The will acts, but 
not by painful effort, for it is led by Divine love in 
that subjection which is perfect freedom. The third 
9 



194 TERESA. 

kind of prayer is that of union, in which the Divine 
life flows into the soul and the will rests in peace in 
the arms of God. She describes this as a dying 
almost entirely to created things and living only for 
heaven, — as a state in which the soul gives up every 
thing, and knows not w^hether she speaks or is silent, 
laughs or weeps. The last mode of prayer is that of 
rapture or ecstasy. This climax of the devout life 
the Saint is never weary of describing, and the im- 
passioned language in which she speaks of the favored 
hours in which the Divine Spirit floods the soul with 
its grace, and makes the dry and thirsty land a bloom- 
ing paradise, would be offensive for its presumption, 
were it not for the humility with which it is always 
apparently accompanied, as when she beseeches the 
Creator not to forget her frailties in the plenitude of 
his mercy, or trust an essence so precious to so fragile 
a vessel. 

Prayer being the essence of religion in her view, of 
course her ethical system must aim directly at the 
nurture of devotion. What her system was is far 
better shown by a glance at the plan of her two chief 
treatises, than by any attempt to gather an ethical 
code from her various writing^s. Her " Path of Per- 
fection" was probably intended by her to serve as a 
practical guide for those who would lead a spiritual 
life, although prepared especially for the religious 
sisterhood of her first charge. She insists, first, upon 
the need of despising the wealth and vanities of the 
world, and of bringing the outward lot into harmony 
with a truly humble mind. The highest office of a 
religious charity consists in strengthening the zeal of 



PATH OF PERFECTION. 195 

the servants of that Church from which all blessings 
flow. To pray with efficacy, the religious must ob- 
serve faithfully the rule of their order, cherish for one 
another a truly Christian love, and shun all the favor- 
itisms and partialities so prevalent especially among 
females. They must watch closely the character of 
the confessor and ^the nature of their interest in his 
visits, and shun as deadly poison the least appeal to 
their vanity. Her chapter on the method of changing 
a confessor presents a curious case of struggle between 
the spirit of independence and the sense of duty. She 
desires her sisters to seek ever a learned and pious 
director, and to use all urgency in the proper quarter 
to procure such a guide. The only love which she 
sanctions is love towards God and towards those who 
seek our salvation. She deems Evangelical charity 
as far beyond friendship as above that other passion 
which she hardly deigns to name, except in her mys- 
tical emblems. She deals very severely with the petty 
sensitiveness and love of preference so common in 
religious houses, and exhorts the faithful to trample 
them under foot. She is jealous even of family ties, 
and urges the rehgious to think far more of brothers 
and sisters who are such in spirit than of those who 
are such by natural affinity. So elevated a spirit can- 
not be won without humility and self-mortification ; 
hence the need of penances, — not those that are con- 
spicuous for their extravagance, but those that most 
effectually humble the soul before God. Not even 
the plea of delicate health is to excuse remissness in 
self-mortification. While treating this point, the Saint 
shows that the disease known among college students 



196 TERESA 

as the Sunday headache has some parallel in convent 
life ; some of the sisters excusing themselves from 
their duty at prayers, now because they are afraid of 
being sick, now because they have a slight headache, 
and again because they have been ill, whereas only 
decided illness is a valid excuse. She urges the duty 
of carrying self-mortification so far as to refrain from 
making excuses, even when blame is unjustly cast. 
In all things the soul should present itself humbly 
before God, and crave his grace, — humility being, as 
she says, like the queen in the game of chess, the 
most powerful agency in the holy war, and able to 
bring even the king to terms. Then the Saint ap- 
proaches the great subject of contemplation in connec- 
tion with obedience and prayer. She urges the glory 
of the marriage of the soul with God by true contem- 
plation, and ends the treatise with directions for the 
use of the Lord's Prayer so as to win the highest 
peace. This prayer she deems sufficient, if used men- 
tally as well as vocally, and duly meditated upon, 
clause by clause. When thus used, whole hours may 
be profitably occupied with saying it only once. Her 
chapters on the Pater Noster are interspersed with 
thoughts on the eucharist as the great centre of the 
religious life, and are followed by exhortations to a 
true humility, patience, and poverty, that shall guard 
the soul against all counterfeits, and lift the Christian 
above all base anxieties and annoying scruples into 
the holy liberty of the children of God. 

We have read this treatise with great interest and 
not a little admiration of its searching self-scrutiny 
and its uncompromising standard of spirituality. Yet 



CASTLE OF THE SOUL. 197 

we miss much of what the New Testament deems 
essential in the true Hfe. The flaming pietism of the 
Spaniard soars far away from (we will not say above) 
that common humanity which He exemplified who 
fed the hungry, healed the sick, and identified himself 
with the lot of the poor and lonely. The "Path of 
Perfection" is not the rule of life for those whose 
prayer is, not that they may be " taken out of the 
world," but that they may be " kept from the evil." 
There is nothing of the Good Samaritan in its pages, 
unless the wounds to be healed in our neighbor are 
such as contemplation and prayer can reach. Yet 
let us remember that the author's sympathy for others 
was that which she prized most fondly herself She 
who despised the body and its comforts, cared little 
for .friendship, and scorned human love, may surely 
be pardoned for being so engrossed with the spiritual 
destitution of mankind as to slight all things tempo- 
ral, even the claims of kindred and home, in her 
impassioned devotion to things deemed by her the 
only eternal goods. Add to her chapters a few from 
the work of the good Franciscan who first led her to 
peace, and who wrote on prayer less for the guidance 
of a secluded sisterhood than for our common human- 
ity, so tried and tempted, and the want is in a great 
measure supplied, and charity stands side by side with 
piety. 

Her " Castle of the Soul or the Abodes " (Las Mo- 
radas) rises even above the "Path of Perfection" in 
mystical devotion. It is the Pilgrim's Progress of the 
devout seeker, from the first entrance into the outer 
gate through successive stages to the seventh and 



198 TERESA. 

last abode, where the soul dwells in heavenly peace, 
its life " hid with Christ in God." in the bliss of per- 
fect union and the rapture of perfect love. This trea- 
tise, although very deficient in method and occa- 
sionally very incoherent, is on the whole a very edi- 
fying book, and contains passages that no Protestant 
could scorn, unless he is prepared also to call Fen- 
elon a dotard and George Fox a fool. Some of its 
imagery is really beautiful. She compares the soul 
to a poor worm that must give up its own will, die 
to itself, hide itself in its shell, bury itself in the earth, 
that, transformed and glorious, it may rise to the 
upper air. Renouncing itself, and buried, as it were, 
in the Divine grandeur, the soul through humility 
and self-renunciation is gifted with new wings and 
soars into the realm of heavenly peace. It is hard to 
believe that the woman who, for years of her religious 
life, could not pray without the guidance of a book, 
could be so free and impassioned in the language of 
devotion as she appears in this treatise. It is as if 
the nature, before a mass of heavy ore without any 
resonance under the stroke of the hammer, had been 
so tempered in the furnace and drawn out into elastic 
chords, as to form the harp-strings that thrill with 
every breath of air. She who deems salvation im- 
possible out of the Church, and binds her faith to the 
priesthood and ritual so implicitly, speaks of God and 
her soul in language that would startle the boldest 
Transcend entalist alike for its freedom and its rap- 
ture. Yet it was no wild-fire that flamed in her 
devotions ; although it might seem as little limited as 
the fire of a burning forest, it was enclosed within 



HER CHARACTER, 199 

an iron grating. She ends her most rapturous flights 
by placing herself humbly at the feet of the Church, 
as the young eagle returns from its adventurous play 
in the sunbeam and with folded wing rests in the 
tranquil nest. 

How shall we dehneate a character so singularly 
mingled, and so little congenial with our Protestant 
modes of thought, as Teresa? We will make the 
attempt, however feeble it may be. 

Her intellect was keen in its perceptions, and in 
many respects remarkable also for its intuitive power. 
She was evidently a close observer of life and char- 
acter, and showed peculiar shrewdness in judging of 
dispositions, and quickness in borrowing illustrations 
from ordinary things. One might collect from her 
treatises, letters, and official papers, ideas of the Span- 
ish character, especially of the peculiarities of Spanish 
women of her day, that in point, and sometimes in 
sarcasm, would rival the " Doblado " of Blanco White, 
The nun she understood very well, and, if enthu- 
siastic for the virtues, was no stranger to the troubles 
of convents. Her education was very limited in lite, 
rary privileges, aod to learning and philosophy she 
made no claim. What, in fact, could we expect of a 
Spanish woman in the sixteenth century, who died 
when Lope de Vega was a scape-grace boy, before 
Cervantes had written, or Calderon was born ; and 
whose walk was so secluded as seemingly to shut 
from her the fact, that Ercilla had celebrated the- 
triumphs of the Christian arras in America by an 
epic poem, and that Garcilasso had become the Pe= 



200 TERESA. 

trarch of Spaia? As to philosophical training", what 
have the Spanish schools ever done to discipline the 
intellectual faculties? Blanco White declared, that, 
even in this present century, the Spanish language 
had never been moulded to express philosophical dis- 
tinctions. 

Kaymund Lulle* and Luis Vivest were the bright- 
est names that Spain gave to philosophy before Te- 
resa^s public career began, and Molinal and Suarez§ 
are apparently the best minds in morals and metaphys- 
ics that have flourished in her country since her day. 
But Teresa did not attempt to be philosophical, bold 
as was her treatment of the highest topics of thought, 
topics that even Kant and Schelling might shrink from 
touching. In the close of her "Abodes," she shows 
her peculiar power, by illustrating, rather than defin- 
ing the transcendental truths of religion. Hers is the 
intuitive, not the inductive or deductive method. And 
surely among the ideas which she claims to have verified 
by the testimony of her own consciousness in favored 
hours of contemplation, there are some truths which this 
devotee, so little trained in the schools, expresses with a 
fervor that Luther would have loved, and a distinctness 
that Cudworth would have honored. She is always 
happy in illustration, although often very homely. The 
images furnished by her observation of ordinary life 
seem to have stood ever ready at her bidding to illus- 
trate her religious views. The garden and the home, 
the elements of nature and the features of society, were 
all made to aid her in her ghostly teachings. It ig 

* A. D. 1235—1315. t 1492— ] 540. t 1535—1601. 
§ 1548—1617. 



HER CHARACTER. 201 

worthy of note, that this bride of Heaven furnishes no 
small portion of her illustrations from the transports and 
troubles of lovers, the cares of married life, and even 
the experience of the nursery. Her fancies clothed 
themselves in imagery as readily as her ideas, and in 
the visions with which her autobiography is so much 
occupied we can see the same representative imagina- 
tion at work in the chambers of her soul that stamps 
itself so decidedly upon her pages. The beauty or 
vividness of her fancy was the more remarkable from 
the fact, that sacred art was comparatively imperfect in 
her day in Spain, and her visions could have had no aid 
from the portraits of Yelasquez or the Madonnas and 
saints of Murillo, as neither of these artists saw the 
light until she had long been numbered with the dead. 
Let not our practical age wholly scorn the visions of 
the Saint, for we, too, in this financial age, are dream- 
ers, although we may be haunted more frequently 
with an aureola of golden ingots than of golden hght. 
Doves, saints, seraphs, demons, crowns, frequent her 
devotional hours, and in her way she was as much a 
dweller in the land of fantasy as the seer of Sweden. 
Yet there is little in her own writings of the enormous 
credulity with which many have interpreted her life. 
Her autobiography is reason itself, when compared 
with the miraculous legends incorporated into the Bull 
of Gregory XV., canonizing her name, and the ac- 
counts of biographers who have celebrated the virtues 
not merely of her prayers, but of her bones. 

Need we speak of moral traits, after what has been 
said? She was humble towards God and her neigh- 
bor, yet in her piety singularly daring and in her 



202 TERESA. 

conversation uncompromising. She could hear the 
severest reproaches without reply, and assert the most 
unpopular opinions without fear. She was stanch 
enough in the faith to sanction the acts of the inqui- 
sition, yet so bland and courteous as to conciUate a 
convent of lax nuns, whom, against her will and theirs? 
she was sent to discipline, and who received her with 
murmurs and parted from her with tears. Her ascetic 
habits never seem to have led her to forget the lady in 
the devotee. She could send a present of a cilice or 
hair-shirt (such a ghostly garment, we suppose, has no 
sex in its name) to a young lady, and accompany it 
w4th a graceful note, or could congratulate a grave 
bishop upon the marriage of his niece in such a way 
as to save at once her. good manners and her belief in 
celibacy.* Her chief joy in the marriage seemed to 
be that the worthy ecclesiastic was free from the guar- 
dianship of so troublesome a charge, and she deems it 
no misfortune that the bridegroom is much the lady's 
senior. Her kind nature led her to look benignly, 
however, on the home pleasures which she had for 
ever renounced. There is some feminine tenderness 
beneath her robe of mortification. Yet she contributed, 
probably, as much as any one to the severity of Span- 
ish art, and combined with the spirit of the Inquisition 
to chastise painting and sculpture into an extreme of 
prudishness that is without parallel. She gave the 
chief model for the holy woman of the canvass, and 
it was by influence such as hers that Magdalens were 
robed as gravely as abbesses, and the nation whose 

* Migne, 11. 382. Cartas, I. 43. 



HUMILITY. 203 

earliest literature was as lax as Boccaccio formed a 
school of painting austere enough to bear the scrutiny 
of Calvin. 

We do not know of any better description of the 
mingled humility and aspiration of her religious cha- 
racter than is given in a passage from one of the best 
of the letters included in that published correspond- 
ence, which is generally more taken up with official 
details and personal matters than with interesting 
thoughts. The passage is from her letter to Velasquez, 
Bishop of Osma :— " Whenever God consoles you, you 
should deem yourself unworthy of it, and on the other 
hand praise his goodness which is thus disposed to 
manifest itself to men, and make them sharers of its 
power and goodness. And greater offence is done to 
God by doubting of his bounty in conferring favors, 
since he glories more in manifesting his omnipotence 
than in showing the force of his justice. Dust and 
ashes as we are, we ought to preserve the conditions of 
dust and ashes, which of their own nature tend to lie 
low upon the earth. But when the wind blows upon 
the dust, it would be acting against its nature if it 
were not lifted up ; and being lifted up it rises, whilst 
the wind sustains it, and returns to its place when the 
wind goes down. Thus the soul, whose emblem it is, 
should keep the conditions of dust and ashes. And 
thus should it be in prayer, when resting merely on its 
own knowledge ; and when the gentle breath of the 
Holy Spirit raises it, and places it in the heart of God, 
and sustains it there, revealing his kindness, mani- 
festing his power, it should know how to enjoy this 
grace with thanksgiving, since God takes it unto him- 



204 TERESA. 

self, pressing it to his bosom as a cherished wife in the 
embrace of her husband." 

Thus at once humble and aspiring, the heart of 
Teresa was as the dust of the earth, resigned to that 
mystical breath that bloweth where it listeth, and 
man knoweth not its path. 

In respect to practical usefulness, it was her aim 
to be at once, as she says, Mary and Martha, and 
unite the life of contemplation with that of action. 
Although the Mary predominated in her character, 
yet the Martha was not wanting. Her executive 
talents were of a high order, as shown in her official 
papers and her marked success in her work of reform. 
If she did not aspire to create a new Order, she did 
what requires quite as much force ; she reformed an 
old Order, and triumphed over the laxity of some 
opposers and the bigotry of others, in calling the 
sisters and brothers of Carmel to the strictness of the 
ancient rule. She feared no labor, and shrank from 
addressing no august authority, even royalty itself, 
for the triumph of her cause. With great energy, 
tact, and perseverance, she devoted herself to her 
work, and blended with her almost Oriental quietism 
a large share of the indefatigable will that distin- 
guishes the sons and daughters of Europe above the 
Asiatic family. The Bull of Gregory styles her the 
new Deborah, triumphing over the enemy within and 
animating a mighty host of militants in defence of 
the beleaguered Church. This is a better saying 
than the greater part of that ghostly document con- 
tains. Under the palm-trees of Mount Ephraim, the 
prophetess of Israel judged the tribes and went with 



HER INFLUENCE. 205 

them to the battle against the invader. So Teresa 
ruled in the church miUtant from her cell, and went 
forth upon her expeditions to strengthen the hearts 
of the champions who would repel the new Sisera 
that had invaded her Israel. As she saw the Pro- 
testant Reformation defeated in Spain, she felt all the 
triumph which the more lyrical nature of the daughter 
of Judah so powerfully uttered : — 

" Awake, awake, Deborah ! 
Awake, awake, utter a song ! 
The kings came and fought, 
They fought the kings of Canaan. 
They fought from heaven ; 
The stars in their courses fought against Sisera." 

Yet Teresa was no stranger to poetry, and com- 
posed verses respectable in literary ability and un- 
surpassed for their devotional fervor. But her Muse 
yearns for heaven rather than minds earthly things. 
Her noted stanzas, whose burden is, "I die, because 
I cannot die," — Miiero porque no 9nuero, — well ex- 
press the tone of her poetry, and the spirit of her life. 
Her love of Christ was a sacred passion, and she 
longed to depart and be with him. 

She stands at the head, it seems to us, of the female 
mystics who have acted so powerfully on the modern 
ages, if we consider her priority in time and extent of 
influence. Her religious order spread itself in all 
lands, and her quietism, unmodified by her caution, 
re-appeared in the " Spiritual Guide " of Molinos, and 
convulsed the Church in the days of Fenelon and 
Bossuet. Catharine of Sienna acted upon a wider 



206 TERESA. 

and more conspicuous stage in the world, Catharine 
Adorna trod a path of broader philanthropy, Madame 
Chantal had more fully developed affections and more 
humane graces, whilst Madame Guyon had a more 
rational faith and drew nearer to our Protestant free- 
dom. But Teresa, it seems to us, went beyond them 
all in the rapture of her devotion, and was more com- 
pletely absorbed in the contemplative life, and more 
fully on fire with mystical love. Her very narrow- 
ness, doubtless, added to her enthusiasm. Her elec- 
tric fervor was concentrated upon a point, the waters 
of her life flowed in a narrow channel ; hence the fire 
of her zeal, and the rushing torrent of her devotion. 

As Madame Guyon is rising into notice and favor 
among Protestants now, it may be well to think of 
her in comparison with the Spanish Saint. Resem- 
bling each other in their love of the prayer of quietude 
and their joy in the mystical marriage with the 
Saviour, they differed widely in history, experience, 
and fortunes. Madame Guyon had a wider culture, 
she knew the mother's heart in her own parental 
affection, and enjoyed the privileges of education 
which the age of Descartes and Fenelon afforded. 
She was, indeed, a Catholic, but insisted compara- 
tively little on priesthoods and rituals, and without 
great violence to her nature could have poured out 
her soul at a meeting of the followers of her English 
contemporary Fox, as well as at the feet of her confes- 
sor La Combe or in the society of her illustrious friend 
of Cambray. She was no partisan, and was hated 
for her very liberality. She founded no order or sect, 
and her name owes most of its fragrance and per- 



HER INFLUENCE. 



207 



manence to Protestant admirers. How different Te- 
resa ! — in Catholic doctrine so firm, looking upon all 
heretics as utterly lost, aad regarding the adorable 
wafer as the seal of salvation and the food of angels, 
and esteeming all prayer without its sanction a mock- 
ery.' How different in ecclesiastical honors ! Her 
name is brilhant in the saintly calendar. Two hymns 
— a very unusual thing — expressly celebrate her piety 
in the Roman Breviary, and are chanted yearly 
throughout the world.* Even now the sisters of her 
Order renew her ghostly austerities, adding to them 
not a little of humanity more considerate of our com- 
mon nature than was hers. In our own Baltimore, 
the visitor so privileged may now see the linen hood 
and serge robe and sandalled feet of the sisters of 
Carmel, and learn from the maidens who attend their 
convent for instruction, that the zeal of the Spanish 
virgin still lives in her spiritual daughters, and unites 
itself with the graces of the affections and the accom- 
plishments of the intellect. 

More and more we are led to believe that no true 
heart ever loses its power, and that the prominent 
characters of history are permanent treasures of our 

* We have no space to write of the recent changes in the monas- 
tic institutions of Spain and the developments of liberalism in 
religious affairs. Singularly has the Spain of Espartero differed 
from that of Alva. Poorly will Isabella the Second and Narvaez 
imitate the conservative policy of Isabella the Catholic andXimenes. 
They that would judge of the remaining strength of Catholicism in 
Spain, must not be content with the lively story-teller, Borrow. 
Let them read the able paper — almost a volume — in the Dublin 
Review, No. XXXVI., which came probably from Archbishop 
Wiseman. 



208 TERESA. 

race. That we need the influence of all good men 
and good women to keep us in the true path, who 
will deny? Standing as we do in one of the extreme 
ranks of Protestant reformers, we are not willing to 
spare from our list of friends the name of this stanch 
champion of Rome. Her life means more than it 
expresses, and has many a lesson which our age can 
read better than hers, and exhibits many a virtue 
which her own consciousness feebly interpreted or 
her own prejudice sadly narrowed. Strip off all ad- 
ventitious appliances, the bonds of dogmatism and 
the bandages of ceremonial, and present her life in its 
own essential spirit, and we have a heart glowing 
with love of God and her neighbor, and ready to suf- 
fer and die for the good of souls and the kingdom of 
Christ. 

Her love of Christ was a sacred passion. In one 
of her visions she thought that he bade her cease to 
mourn that the books she desired were denied her, 
and to regard him as the living book, — the truth made 
life. Thus the obedient daughter of Rome cherished 
affections which have a parallel in the experience of 
those of her sex whose names are most honored among 
Protestants. The three types of religion, the ritual, 
the dogmatic, the spiritual, agree thus in one. Catho- 
lic and Calvinist unite with the Liberal sects in love 
for Him who came to reveal the Father and lead man 
to God. Take an example from each class. Teresa 
of Jesus, Sarah Edwards, Elizabeth Fry, — how dif- 
ferent, yet how hke ! Compare the expressions of 
their inmost experience, and it is not always easy to 
distinguish them from one another. For man and 



LOVE OF CHRIST. 209 

for woman we believe in the need of this Evangelical 
love, and hold in little respect the creed that shuts 
Christ out from our affections by regarding him mere- 
ly as a teacher who once lived and taught precious 
truth, but who stands now in no relations of personal 
tenderness to us. We need to love Christ with an 
engrossing affection. Sadly do the daughters of 
Christendom lose native dignity and power, when 
they look coldly upon Him who has given them their 
exalted rank and noblest graces. The common an- 
nals of our religion record every year the deeds of 
nobler women than Chaucer ever celebrated in his 
heathenish Legend of the Good, or Tennyson in his 
dainty Dream of the Fair, of that sex whose eulogists 
are seldom their true friends. Poor of itself is the 
heart even of woman, unstable its impulses, uncertain 
its charity, without the hold on heavenly things which 
is given by communion with God through Christ. 
With this hold, the nature that seems little gifted with 
genial affections blooms out in the loveliest temper 
and the most benign energies. We have lately stood 
by the grave of a woman who had become a house- 
hold name in our community for benevolence to the 
orphan. Of a severe, unromantic nature, not abound- 
ing in tenderness nor prone to enthusiasm, she learned 
at once to look upon Christ as the manifestation of 
God, and to love him in the persons of the poor, and 
her whole life was changed by the power of her Evan- 
gelical faith. She was tender, devoted, enthusiastic, 
persevering, and went "from strength to strength." 
Hundreds of children redeemed from misery by her 
zeal call her blessed. The children of our Sunday 



210 TERESA. 

schools have reared a monument to her as the Chil- 
dren's Friend. What is there in any system of formal 
ethics or abstract philosophy that can take the place 
of the Gospel and of Him in whom the Gospel became 
life? 

Nearly three centuries have passed since Teresa 
died, and the conflict in which she took so conspicuous 
a part is not yet finished. The parties of the move- 
ment, of the re-action, and of the middle course are 
still at work. The spirit of Luther is not dead ; 
Loyola lives in far more societies and persons than are 
wilUng to own his name; and the mantle of Cranmer 
is worn by many more prelates than rule the British 
Church. The women of Christendom are entering 
more into the great arena, and taking sides with the 
antagonists. Many a devotee nourishes in contem- 
plation and prayer the life which Teresa deemed 
divine, and not a few converts to Romanism are made 
from her susceptible sex. A woman occupies the 
British throne, and the name of Victoria represents a 
vast multitude who laud the calm conversatism of the 
Episcopal Church, and in their love of moderation 
sometimes glorify mediocrity. All over the world, too, 
there are earnest and gifted women who are pressing 
on to the better time, careful observers of existing evils 
and friends of every worthy reform. A blessing rest 
upon them all, whatever their church, creed, or coun? 
try ! We will not make invidious distinctions. Honor 
to all the Marys and Marthas, who, in thought or 
action, devotion or benevolence, are seeking the good 
of their race ! Yet our sympathies are most with 
those who look beyond the ceremonial and the dogma 



WOMAN. 211 

to the spirit and the truth. May they retain all their 
freedom and humanity, and yet never allow them- 
selves to fall from that Christian faith without which 
freedom is license and humanity sentimentalism. Far 
more to our taste is that Christian Sybil, Elizabeth 
Barrett, than that Socialist Pythoness called George 
Sand, although even her we deem not wholly evil. 
We know of nothing more touching in modern litera- 
ture than Elizabeth Barrett's ode, the '• Cry of the 
Children," and see not how its pleadings are to be 
effectual, unless the mothers and daughters of Chris- 
tendom have more thoughtfulness for society and 
more faith in God. The fate of childhood in poverty, 
— the wrongs of woman, whether in the perils of want 
or in those of luxury, — the defects of female education, 
— the narrowness of female occupations, — these and 
the like are topics that are yet to be studied as never 
before by feminine sagacity, and treated with feminine 
fidelity. One of the dreamy theorists of our age has 
maintained the doctrine, that the course of Divine 
revelation is to be completed by the advent of a new 
Messiah in the form of woman. Far from holding 
the visions of St. Simon in any respect, we are ready to 
believe that Divine Providence will insure new triumphs 
of the Messiah through the truer. life and influence of 
the sex w^iich he has so exalted. She who would 
serve her race faithfully, and win honor to the true 
standard of Christian womanhood, must be proof 
against the world's false homage, as against its open 
hostility. Small praise do we give to monastic seclu- 
sion, vigils, and mortifications. But a crown of honor 
surely belongs to her who is ready to make sacrifice of 



I 



212 TERESA. 

her own vanity or ease for the good of her sex or the 
triumph of the Divine kingdom. Such sacrifices the 
women of the luxurious nineteenth century are called 
upon to make ; and in making them, they can learn 
Bome worthy lessons even from their Spanish sisters of 
the sixteenth century, — surely from Isabella of the 
queenly will, and Teresa of the flaming heart. 

1849. 



VIII. 
FAUSTUS SOCINUS, 

AND THE REVIVAL OF UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 



Modern Unitarianism dates from the time, when 
all present denominations began — the rise of the Pro- 
testant Reformation, and can claim a& great antiquity 
as any Protestant sects. How prominent its doctrine 
of the Godhead stood in the primitive ages of Chris- 
tianity, it is not our present purpose to show. The 
first prominent Unitarian since the Reformation was a 
friend of Luther and Melancthon — Cellarius, a learned 
and devoted German, who after suffering imprison- 
ment in his own country for his opinions escaped to 
Switzerland, and in the free atmosphere of Basle died 
there the year of Calvin's death, 1564. Time would 
fail me to describe the lives, labors, sufferings and 
achievements of the various early Unitarian confessors. 
We must pass by Hetzer, Denkius, Campanus, Gen- 
tihs. Pastor, Claudius and others ; and be content to 
treat principally of one man whose name is usually 
idendified with modern Unitarianism. Before we 
enter upon the subject, let us bear in mind that he did 
not begin the movement which he guided, nor are 



214 sociNus. 

those who agree with him in his leading doctrine of 
the strict unity of God, by any means accountable for 
all his opinions, or disposed to call themselves by his 
name. 

The year 1546 shall be our starting point for the 
sake of distinctness — the very year of Luther's death. 
We turn from his death bed in his native village, ant! 
look towards Italy, then fully awakened to the threat- 
ening powder of the Reformation. Rome is aroused 
from her torpor — Loyola is at his post in the van of 
his invincibles — Caraffa too was at his post at the 
head of the new inquisitors, whose office it was to 
hunt out heretics. It had long been whispered about 
that the deadly heresy which denies that there is a 
trinity of persons in the Godhead, had appeared within 
the very states of the Pope, and soon the whisper grew 
into open assertion. The heretics were found to have 
their head-quarters at Vicenza, a city within the terri- 
tory of Venice, and to comprise some of the most distin- 
guished and gifted men of Italy. The anathema went 
forth — the innovators were proscribed — three were ar- 
rested, of whom one died in prison and two were put to 
death at Venice, whilst the remainder succeeded in 
effecting their escape. Among the fugitives the most 
noted was Laelius Socinus, a native of Sienna, Tuscany, 
of a noble Italian family. He who had in his veins the 
blood of popes and princes, proved the strength of his 
principles by quitting his native country and preferring 
the bracing air of free Switzerland to the gentler skies 
of priest-ridden Italy. He devoted himself thenceforth 
to the study of divinity and the promulgation of 
Unitarian opinions, and after going upon missions to 



EARLY LIFE. 215 

France, Holland, Germany and Poland, he died, aged 
only thirty-seven at Zurich, Switzerland, in 1562. 
The inheritance of his good name and the great 
labors fell to one destined to use them with far greater 
effect than he. At the time of the exile of Leelius 
Socinus, his nephew Faustus was a boy of eight years, 
living at Sienna, that city of Tuscany so remarkable 
for historical associations, and so rich in mountainous 
scenery. The boy had rambled among the hills, sur- 
veying many a time the landscape so fair with the 
vineyard, the olive-grove and the grainfield. and had 
undoubtedly heard from his father who was a dis- 
tinguished scholar and afterwards professor of law, 
the history of the old Italian republics, and learned to 
desire a larger measure of Uberty than papal Rome 
now afforded. How far he was acted upon by the 
event of his uncle's exile and the opinions which 
caused it, we do not know. Yet it is very obvious 
that ere long he was much under his uncle's influence, 
looked to him for the counsel which the early death 
of his own parents forbade his receiving at home. 
Until the age of twenty, his education was directed 
chiefly to the study of the law, and was by no means 
of a very exalted character. After a voluntary ab- 
sence of three years at Lyons, France — -a visit closed 
by his uncle's decease, Faustus returned to Italy and 
passed the twelve subsequent years at the court of the 
Grand Duke of Tuscany in high favor and the most 
honorable employments. But obviously influences 
were at work within him that gave him little relish 
for the honors and pleasures so freely within his reach. 
His whole family had for a long while inclined to 



216 sociNus. 

serious thought and earnest convictions. His uncle's 
memory never left him. The image of that modest, 
prudent, high-minded, learned and devoted benefactor 
haunted him. His own soul yearned for a hfe more 
rational and spiritual than the court allowed or the 
church prescribed. He felt that the best part of his 
life was wasting away without yielding him any pro- 
gress in the knowledge and virtue which he most 
dearly prized. He felt that far more should be ex- 
pected of him than to be the gay cavaher of the ducal 
palace, or the listless attendent upon papal ceremo- 
nials. What effect his knowledge of the Romish 
movements against the Reformation, the measures in 
progress to arrest the advance of liberal views, had 
upon him, we are not told, but may readily conjec- 
ture. His oldest biographer, in a work of which the 
English translation is dated in 1653, thus describes 
the grounds of Socinus' determination to leave Italy 
for a freer soil at the age of thirty-five : " About the 
close of that time, his heart was touched with a 
serious deUberation, concerning the choice of good 
things ; which he performed with such greatness of 
mind, that he determined for the hope of heavenly 
things to trample under foot all the commodities of 
earthly wishes ; wherefore without delay, despairing 
to obtain from the extremely unwilling princes leave 
to depart, he of his own accord forsook his country, 
friends, hopes and riches, that he might the more 
freely employ himself about his own and other men's 
salvation." He turned his back upon the splendors 
of Florence, and passed the following three years at 
Basle, Switzerland, that city which is still the asylum 



TRANSYLVANIA. 217 

of the oppressed, and which in our own day has given 
a home to Follen and De Wette, as it did of old to 
the freer spirits among the early reformers. Here he 
devoted himself earnestly to the study of theology, 
was confirmed in his Unitarian opinions, and asserted 
them without reserve and without fear. With his 
student life at Basle we may consider his preparation 
as ended and his active work as ensuing. 

He had already won such reputation b> ^ book on 
the Saviour, that he was sent for by thfe ng Uni- 

tarians of Transylvania to help them in so contro- 
versial difficulties which had arisen among the '. He 
used his influence to check the disposition of por- 
tion of the Unitarian body to give up invoking the 
name of Christ, and earnestly claimed for the Saviour 
the honors of solemn invocation. His stay was short, 
and he had no part in the persecutions of the offend- 
ing heretics, which are sometimes ascribed to him. 
The odium of imprisoning Francis David belongs to 
the prince of Transylvania and an influential phy- 
sician, Blandrata, who afterwards fell into general 
contempt. Socinus passed into Poland, then the 
stronghold of Unitarianism, and from the year 1579 
devoted himself wholly to its defence. The Polish 
government had been for some time distinguished for 
its toleration, and consequently attracted towards 
itself fugitives of every order who had been driven 
from their own land on account of their opinions. 
Among them were several prominent Unitarians, by 
whose influence large numbers especially of the more 
intelligent classes had been converted to the Unita- 
rian faith. At first all Protestant Qhristians worship- 
10 



218 sociNus. 

ped freely tog'ether, and for about twenty years Unita- 
rians and Trinitarians had entire fellowship. But 
about fourteen years before Faustus Socinus visited 
Poland, the division had taken place and Unitarians 
were a distinct denomination and quite a numerous 
one. 

Upon his arrival, he declared his opinions and pre- 
sented himself for admission to the fellowship of the 
churches. As soon as it was found that in some 
points he differed from the prevailing Unitarian views^ 
and went somewhat farther than they did, he was 
received very coldly and looked upon with suspicion. 
He proved how much more he cared for the interests 
of truth than the irritations of self-love by remaining 
among those who had so roughly repulsed him and 
devoting himself to the correction of their errors. He 
battled manfully against ancient superstitions and 
new-light radicalism, and of course met with op- 
position on each hand. Complaint being lodged 
against liim before the civil power for publishing cer- 
tain views of magistracy, he withdrew from the capital 
city of Cracovia, and established himself at a place a 
few miles distant in the country, preferring to avail 
himself of a friendly man's hospitality and defend 
himself with his pen under the protection of a noble 
name, than to declare his grievances within the un- 
sympathizing walls of a prison. His quiet life there 
devoted to study and composition and solaced by a 
happy marriage with his patron's daughter, was a 
bright interval in the exile's history and promised to 
put a new aspect upon his career. But this promise 
soon proved beseless ; his wife died ; his Italian estates 



PERSECUTIONS. 219 

that had thus far given him a considerable income 
were confiscated by his popish foes upon the death of 
the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Widowed, sick, im- 
poverished, Socinus must now show whether he has 
been dallying with Christianity in the dainty spirit of 
a scholar's curiosity or has within him a deep faith 
that can move him to heroic labors. 

Misfortune does not daunt him. The Italian ex- 
ile, with his daughter Agnes at his side, returned to 
the Polish capital to contend yet more strenuously for 
his faith. A spirit Hke his could not be resisted. He 
made many ^important conversions, and not a few of 
whom he could not win over to his doctrines, he won 
to mutual charity and forbearance. His cause grew 
rapidly, and in the course of ten years he had proof of 
his success in the desperate persecution which he ex- 
perienced. Upon the publication of his book concern- 
ing the Saviour, his enemies stirred up the mob to, 
make an assult upon his person. On the verge of his 
sixtieth year, after a life of singular gentleness and pu- 
rity, he was dragged from his chamber, where he had 
been resting a few days for the renovation of his 
health, was carried in a shameful manner through the 
principal streets amid furious clamors for his execu- 
tion. But he was not to perish thus, although papers 
— the work of years, and which he declared were 
dear to him as life, were destroyed. He was rescued 
by friendly hands, sought shelter in a quiet village 
nine miles distant, and there with his pen exercised a 
commanding influence over the churches. The re- 
maining six years of his life appear to have passed in 
peaceful thought and composition. The cause dear- 



^ 

220 sociNus. 

est to him prospered as never before, and the evening 
of his troubled day was unclouded. He died at 
the age of sixty-five. At the opening of spring he 
breathed his last in that northern climate so little 
congenial with his Italian temperament, evincing on 
his death bed a spirit at peace with God and his 
neighbor, not forgetful indeed of past trials, but 
looking upon them all in the hght of a cheerful hope. 
His last words were these : — " No less full of envy 
and trouble than of days, I do with a joyful and un- 
daunted hope, incline to the period of my appointed 
time, which is both a discharge of sorrow and a re- 
ward of labor." 

He died in the year 1604, sixteen years before the 
Pilgrim fathers landed on Pilgrim rock. Upon his 
tomb, a Latin epitaph was written to this effect : 

" Luther destroyed the roofs of Babylon, 
Calvin the walls, but Socinus the foundations." 

How far can we agree with the language of this 
epitaph? What judgment shall we pass upon this 
Unitarian Reformer, his character, his doctrines, and 
his influence ? 

His character is very easily portrayed, for in respect 
to this, there is no wide difference between his friends 
and his foes. All candid persons are ready to allow 
that he was a conscientious, benevolent and devoted 
man. In regard to religious disposition, it is equally 
obvious that he was a man of great piety, living in a 
constant sense of responsibility to God and an earnest 
faith in Christ as the Messiah from God and bringer 
of peace and salvation. Yet his religious character 



HIS CHARACTER. 221 

was more distinguished for conscientious fidelity and 
sober thought than rapturous emotion or mystical 
sentiment. His habitual spirit was such as would 
give him small honor in a Catholic retreat or a Pro- 
testant revival meeting. Men, like the impassioned 
Luther, the mystical Swedenborg, the ecstatic Wesley, 
would find much fault with a character so acute, 
careful and inquiring as his. In some traits that give 
the heart power and enlargement he was unques- 
tionably deficient. His Christian character was far 
more after the standard of the ethical James than the 
contemplative John. But in an age of great fanati- 
cism, let it be remembered to his immortal honor, 
that he ever earnestly insisted upon the practical 
principles of Christianity, and if he did not soar so 
high as some of his contemporaries into the mysteries 
of the divine life, he never, like too many of them, 
forgot plain duty in enraptured trances, or despised 
good works in the ecstacies of impassioned feeling. 

In respect to intellect, Socinus may be placed with- 
out doubt among the gifted men of our race. Yet we 
by no means claim for him so high a place as belongs 
to some of his successors. He was more a man of 
elaborate argument than of ready insight. He be- 
longs to the Aristotelian rather than to the Platonic 
class of minds. He was the careful commentator and 
logical theologian rather than the profound philoso- 
pher or the intuitive seer. In mind though not in 
heart, he had far more aflfinity with the acute Calvin 
than with the impassioned Luther. He differed much 
from his Unitarian brethren of the present day in his 
estimate of the province of reason and imagination in 



222 * sociNus. 

the sphere of religion, whilst he rejected, as they do, 
the dogma of the unqualified depravity of human 
nature. He distrusted ceremonial worship and heated 
enthusiasm so far as sometimes to carry him into an 
opposite extreme. Yet who will wonder that a man 
who had passed so many years among Christians apt 
to forget in the pageantry of the altar the first prin- 
ciples of goodness, and who had afterwards in his 
exile seen such sad instances of the shipwreck of con- 
science under the pretended fervors of faith, — who 
will wonder, we ask, that such a man should insist 
so much upon practical obedience to the law of Christ 
as the only ground of safety, and be sometimes in 
danger of slighting too much the claims of devotional 
feeling? Yet his creed was not, as is so often said, 
a code of mere morality. Christ was its corner-stone, 
and to him Christ was the name before which every 
knee should bow. 

As a practical man, Socinus was laborious, discreet, 
persevering, efficient, and in the end successful. Two 
folios of commentaries and treatises attest the indus- 
try of his pen, and a large community of Christians 
who had been instructed and harmonized by him, 
proved at his death that his labor had not been 
in vain. 

In personal appearance he was, according to his 
Polish biographer, ''of a form answering to his dis- 
position, being of such a stature as exceeded not the 
just size, yet was nearer to tallness. The habit of 
his body was somewhat slender yet within meas- 
ure; in his countenance the dignity of his high fore- 
head and masculine beauty of his eyes did cast a 



PRAISED BY ANTAGONISTS. 223 

glance. Nor did tlie comeliness and grace of his loak 
diminish the vigor and majesty thereof. There v/as 
a marvellous simplicity in his manners which wd3 so 
tempered with gravity, that he Vv^as free from all 
superciliousness. Wheace it came to pass that you 
would sooner reverence than fear him. Nevertheless 
he did so break and tame his choleric temper, that the 
mildness which did afterwards shine forth in him 
seemed to very many to be the praise of nature not of 
industry." 

We are willing to close our estimate of his charac- 
ter by a passage from an author who has written in 
opposition to his doctrines. " Such and so consider- 
able a man," says Ashwell, ^' was the author and 
patron of this sect. All those qualities that excite the 
admiration and attract the regards of men met in him : 
that, as it were with a charm, he bewitched all who 
conversed with him and left on their minds strong im- 
pressions of wonder and affection towards him. He so 
excelled in fine parts and in lofty genius, such were 
the strength of his reasonings and the power of his 
eloquence, he displayed in the sight of all so many 
distinguished virtues, which he either professed or 
counterfeited in an extraordinary degree, that he ap- 
peared formed to engage the attention of all mankind ; 
and it is not in the least surprising that he deceived 
great numbers and drew them over to his party. So 
what Augustine said of Faustus Manicheeus may not 
be improperly applied to Paustus Socinus, 'Magnum 
Diaboli Laqueum, the Devil's great Decoy.'" When 
an opponent speaks thus of our early Unitarian 
brother, we are content to make no reply, for such 



2.24 sociNus. 

'blnriie is the best praise. No greater eulogy can be 
bestowed upon a man by his antagonist than to de- 
clare that his gifts and virtues were so great, that the 
6h.li;' ^^y ^^ accounting for them is to ascribe them to 
the iristigation of the devil — to grant the attributes of 
goodness and yet call them only the shining garments 
in which Satan enrobes his minions. Would that 
such garments were more common, and the radiance 
of them so great that only theological asperity could 
fail to see in tiiem the brightness of heaven's own 
raiment. 

Such was Socinus in life and character. We will 
now speak of his doctrines and their influence. 

All men of candid minds must respect the character 
of Socinus. As to his doctrines, of course, there will 
be as many different opinions as there are creeds. No 
denomination of Christians will be found ready to en- 
dorse all his doctrines, although in some points of doc- 
trine he deserves the sympathy of all enlightened 
thinkers. As for us, we must give him the credit of 
being the most earnest defender among the early Pro- 
testants of three cardinal truths of religion — the strict 
unity of God, the divine authority of Christ as the 
messenger of God, and the free offer of salvation to 
those who believe in Christ and follow his principles. 
We must honor him for vindicating these truths in a 
manner so reverent towards the Scriptures and so 
considerate towards reason and humanity. We must 
honor him for vindicating the parental character of 
God from the distortions of theologians who saw in 
the Most High only a terrible Jehovah rather than the 
Heavenly Father. We must honor him for giving 



HIS DOCTRINES. 225 

Christ so exalted a place in the reverence of Christians 
without claiming for the Son any divine glory except 
what is bestowed on him by the Father. We must 
honor him for recognizing so distinctly the moral 
elements in human nature and calling man to use his 
gifts in the light of the Gospel not doubting that God 
will receive him with favor, if he is faithful to his 
powers and trusts. 

The emphasis with which Socinus rejected the doc- 
trine that God's wrath against man demanded some 
victim and was wiUing to punish Christ in man's 
stead, must win the respect of large classes of Chris- 
tians not within the Unitarian ranks ; whilst we may 
freely ask all considerate Christians to revere the 
earnestness with which he asserted the worth of prac- 
tical rehgion in opposition to worldly vices and formal 
pageants, and thus made himself in moral strictness 
second to none of the Reformers. In an age when 
Calvin and Cranmer and even Melancthon were will- 
ing that the heretic's blood should be shed because of 
his heresy, we must admire the man who opposed the 
shedding of human blood, whether upon the scaffold 
or the battlefield— who on the one hand protested 
against the radicalism that would destroy all human 
government, and on the other against the tyranny 
that would bind both soul and body, enforce opinions 
by the sword, and punish error as murder. We speak 
no slight praise when we call Socinus a great prac- 
tical reformer, at once cautious and uncompromising. 
How differeritly the history of the last three centuries 
would have been written, had his principles been gene- 
rally adopted, instead of those of Calvin and Cranmer, 
10"^ 



226 sociNus. 

let the records of the myriads tortured on account of 
their opinions and the myriads slain in war indicate 
better than any labored argument. Would that the 
prelates and divines who have so often stirred men up 
to butchery had possessed more of the spirit of him 
whose name has risen so frequently to their lips when 
they declaim against damnable heresy. What heresy 
is so damnable as the cruelty that imbrues its hands 
in blood ; — what heresy is like hatred? 

Socinus regarded Jesus Christ as a man divinely 
born and endowed, not pre-existent except in the de- 
cree of the Father and that Eternal Word which was 
implanted within him. Nothing could exceed the em- 
phasis with which he urged the claims of the Saviour 
to divine honor as the representative of God and the 
only mediator between God and man. He insisted 
much upon the perpetual ministry of Christ and the 
duty of Christians to live in relations of personal love 
and reverence towards him. 

In reference to future punishment, he taught the 
doctrine of a future and righteous retribution, generally 
contenting himself with the language of Scripture upon 
the subject, but indicating sometimes the opinion that 
the incorrigible would be at last annihilated, and God 
be all in all. 

Yet proscribed as the name of Socinus has been, 
his influence has never ceased. In Poland, the country 
in which he spent the laborious portion of his life, it 
jvas long very powerful. A numerous denomination 
with a large college and printing establishment did 
honor to his efforts and enjoyed the same toleration as 
other Christians. But the hatred of the Catholics and 



FOLLOWERS PERSECUTED. 227 

Galvinists against, these Unitarians was rather latent 
than extinct, and ere long after his death it burst 
forth. The first prominent victim was an opulent 
merchant who was attacked by a malicions prosecu- 
tion as to some business transactions. He was called 
upon to verify his statement by an oath, and he was 
ready to take the oath in the name of Almighty God. 
But it was insisted upon that he should swear by the 
triune God or by the cross of Christ, and a crucifix 
was placed in his hands for the purpose. Indignant, 
the merchant dropped the crucifix upon the ground, 
and a clamor was at once raised against him as at 
blasphemer. He was sentenced to suffer death in the 
most excruciating form — his tongue to be pierced, his 
hands and feet to be cut off, his body to be beheaded, 
and then burned at the stake. This horrible sentence 
was executed at Warsaw, in the year 1611. To the 
Jesuits a prominent part in this abominable transac- 
tion has been ascribed. The Unitarian cause, how- 
ever, was not thus to be put down. Its eneimes waited 
another occasion to vent their bigotry. In the year 
1638,— two years after Roger Williams brought the 
doctrine of toleration to the state which he founded^ 
— another outbreak of cruelty took place in Poland. 
A mad prank of some boyish students of the Unitarian 
college of Racow, was the occasion of letting loose 
against the inoffensive sect, the whole force of priest- 
craft and superstition. The boys had thrown stones 
at a cross by the wayside, and beaten it down. In 
vain was it that the college government punished the 
offenders, and the parents and chief men asserted 
their condemnation of the deed. The college which 



228 sociNus. 

at times contained a thousand students was broken 
up, the printing house was demohshed, and the minis- 
ters and professors were exiled. Still the denomina- 
tion continued in the exercise of most its former privi- 
leges. One blow more and they are all taken away. 
Twenty years afterwards — in 1658 — the Unitarians 
were accused of plotting against the State, and a de- 
cree of banishment was issued against them, and of 
death in case of their renewing and propagating their 
opinions. The merely nominal Unitarians conformed ; 
the sincere confessors quitted the country, the chief 
part establishing themselves in Trans3dvania, and 
others seeking an asylum in Switzerland, Holland, 
England, and all the freer states of Europe. The 
50,000 Unitarians of Transylvania with their three 
colleges and civil rights, are a monument to this day 
of the early persecutions and labors of their fathers. 
The eight folios now found in all our large libraries, 
labelled, " Bibliotheca of the Polish Brothers who are 
called Unitarians," afford abundant proof of the zeal, 
learning and candor, of Socinus and his coadjutors. 

Alas for Poland that she thus drove from her pro- 
tection so many of her best citizens. A terrible re- 
tribution came in little less than a century. The 
coalition between Catholics, Calvinists and politicians, 
to put dowa the Unitarians, may well remind us of 
that foul coalition in the next century betAveen Aus- 
tria, Prussia and Russia, against the liberty and very 
existence of the nation, when the heroic Kosciusko 
fell, and the butcher Suwarrow conquered, and Poland 
was stricken from the list of nations. Empire once 
able to defy the autocrat of Russia, to look down upon 



SOCINIAN WRITERS. 229 

the throne of the Czars, and to despise the puny power 
of Prussia ; alas that she should persecute her own 
children, and thus give an omen of the day when 
her walls should be desolate, and the noblest of her 
sons exiles. 

Of the style of composition and the reasoning pow- 
ers of the Socinian school of Unitarians, Archbishop 
Tillotson says : — " To do right to the writers on that 
side, I must own that generally they are a pattern of 
the fair way of disputing and debating matters of re- 
hgion, without heat and unseemly reflections upon 
their adversaries. They generally argue matters 
with that temper and gravity, and that freedom from 
passion and transport, which become a serious and 
weighty argument; and for the most part, they reason 
closely and clearly with extraordinary guard and 
caution ; with great dexterity and decency, and yet 
with smartness and subtilty enough ; with a very 
gentle heart and few hard words: virtues to be praised 
wherever they are to be found, yea, even in an enemy, 
and very worthy of our imitation." He goes on to 
say, that compared with them, other controversial 
writers are mere bunglers, and that their^chief defect 
is not reason, wit or temper, but only a good cause. 
When men like the illustrious Tillotson speak of the 
Unitarian writers thus, it is needless for us to recite 
their praises. If we could collect all the passages 
from the writings of their opponents, which allow 
their social and moral worth, and blame them for at- 
taching such importance to good works, the eulogium 
from the lips of antagonists would be complete. 

Such was Paustus Socinus, — such were his charac- 



230 sociNus. 

ter, his doctrines, his associates. We are of course 
glad to speak well of him as of a distinguished mem- 
ber of the Unitarian brotherhood. Yet we cannot call 
him master, nor take upon ourselves his name. In 
religion, Jesus Christ is our master, and we read na- 
ture, the soul and the Bible, for ourselves. We go 
beyond him in liberahty and toleration ; for whilst he 
opposed the infliction of death for opinions, he advo- 
cated the use of lighter penalties against deadly here- 
sies ; and whilst he cherished fellowship Avith other 
Christian Churches, of the Protestant orders, he re- 
garded the Roman Catholics as too idolatrous to have 
fellowship with Christians here, or a place among the 
redeemed hereafter. While some Unitarians agree 
with him in his views of Christ, as a man divinely 
born and not pre-existent, others regard the Saviour 
as a pre-existent being, who assumed our nature, and 
others still regard him as having simply a human 
nature, with divine influences added after his birth. 
All Socinians are of course Unitarians ; yet few ex- 
isting Unitarians, if any, are Socinians. Yet Unita- 
rians of every class are not ashamed of the memory of 
Paustus Socinus. Whether called Sabellians, Arians, 
Socinians, or Humanitarians, they are ready to defend 
his leading principles against his bitterest adversaries, 
and to merge lesser differences in asserting that to 
us there is one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

It is a cheering and reasonable faith, that no hon- 
est word ever dies, and no true life ever comes to 
nought. Baffled as Socinus repeatedly was, and per- 
secuted as were his followers, his influence has ever 



LESSONS 231 

been on the increase, and his leading doctrines were 
never so powerful as now. In all countries where 
thought has been left free, Unitarian opinions have 
won the assent of numbers of the best minds, and 
three chief republics of modern history — Geneva, Hol- 
land and America — have given strong proofs of the 
connection between free thought and Unitarian Chris- 
tianity. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that wher- 
ever Unitarians have been found, however much they 
may be sometimes lacking in the raptures of emotion 
and the ceremonials of the ritual, they have always 
given their influence to education and humanity, and 
insisted earnestly upon a sense of accountableness to 
God, and of dependence on his love, as the great senti- 
ment of rehgion, the test of faith, and the pledge of 
fidelity. They have their sins, and are quite prone to 
confess them to each other. Let those denomina- 
tions that are without spot, cast the first stone. 

We leave this topic not without a lesson — a lesson 
of fidelity, a lesson of liberality. First of fidelity; a 
noble host is with us in our dissent from leading doc- 
trines of the Churches. Multitudes who lived before 
Rome rose to Empire, and other multitudes who have 
come upon the stage since the sceptre of Rome was 
broken by Reformation, have been with us in their 
essential principles ; and their lives, so conspicuous 
for purity, call on us trumpet-tongued to be faithful to 
our God, our Saviour, and our fellow-men. 

A lesson of liberahty ; we would not count our- 
selves to have apprehended, but would still press on — 
onward, upward, higher, higher. By their birth-right 
or adoption into the realm of Unitarian believers, men 



I 



232 sociNus. 

should deem it their duty, as well as privilege, to bless 
every good work and cheer every earnest thought — 
•meet every fraternal token in fellow Christians, and 
be willing to salute them who are not ready to salfite 
us. Blessed be He who watches the issues of time, 
that the enlarged spirit, so craved by our fathers, is 
now extending itself so widely among those who 
once shrunk from their society with loathing. Catho- 
lics and Calvinists combined to drive Unitarians from 
Poland. Now Unitarians have liberty of worship in 
almost every country of Christendom, and each year 
rings the knell of some stronghold of spiritual despo- 
tism. Day dawns ; Heaven speed its brightening. 
Our souls hasten the time when we may all merge 
disputed opinions in vital faith — dogmatism in active 
humanity, and we may all say from our experience, 
deeper than from the letter of creeds : — To us there is 
one God, the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ. 



1849. 



IX. 



HUGO GROTIUS AND THE 
ARMINIANS.^ 



He who loves truth more than party, who by his 
candid spirit and moderate pohcy seeks rather to 
rebuke extravagances and reconcile strifes than to be 
the trumpeter of a sect or the pander to a faction, 
may hope to hve in peace with his own soul and with 
his God, and may not despair of winning the respect 
of just men in his own and after ages ; but he cannot 
anticipate that his name will be made the rahying- 
cry in the conflicts of opinion. He must be content 
to have many feebler and baser minds preferred before 
him ; content with the censures of the many who 
mistake his moderation for cowardice, and the praises 
of the few whose word, however honorable to his 

* 1. History of Holland from the Beginning of theTenth to the End 
of the Eighteenth Century. By C. M. Davies. London. 1841-44. 
Three vols. 8vo. 

2. Hugo Grolius nach seinen Schicksalen und Schriften dargestellt. 
Von Heinrich Luden. Berlin. 1806. Hugo Grotius exhibited 
in his Fortunes and Writings. By Henry Luden. 

3. Hugonis Grotii EpistolcE. Amsterdam. 1687. folio. Letters 
of Huofo Grotius. 



234 GROTIUS. 

worth, can give him little favor with the multitude. 
Such a man in some respects was Erasmus, the 
briUiant scholar of the Reformation. Such a man, 
beyond question, was Melancthon, the theologian of 
the Reformation, the superior of Erasmus in 'the 
devotedness of his life, the master even of Luther in 
theological v/isdom. Such a man unquestionably was 
Hugo Grotius, the Christian statesman, who in sacred 
scholarship caught the mantle of his illustrious coun- j 
tryman Erasmus, and, by his sufferings and labors 
in behalf of the peace of Christendom, merits from the 
friends of Christian union a higher name than he. 

Identified with no party, Grotius has found few 
partisans. They who have most praised his virtues 
have most endangered his memory. Bossuet, Bu- | 
rigny, and Butler, in exhibiting the strong leaning of 
his later days towards the Roman Church, have won 
for him ambiguous honors from Catholics, much to ] 
the prejudice of his reputation with Protestants. Until 
the publication of Mr. Davies's excellent volumes, no 
ample history of Holland has existed in the English 
tongue, and it has been a task far from easy to form 
a satisfactory opinion of that country in the age of 
Grotius, and of his relation to his times. Even now, 
we have no adequate life of this great man in our 
own language. With the aid of the German biog- 
raphers Schroeckh and Luden, we need not, however, 
complain of the scantiness of materials ; especially 
not, if we can verify their statements by that best and 
most interesting illustration of the man and his times, 
the ample collection of the letters of Grotius.* 

* We regret that one important source of inforination has beea a 



HOLLAND IN 1619- 235 

We now turn toward Holland ; we go back two 
centuries to seek a Christian scholar, statesman, mo- 
ralist, and theologian, whose history has important 
relations to our own times, and especially to our own 
country. We will start from a point of view familiar 
to us all. The year before the Pilgrim fathers em- 
barked from Holland for their new home on this con- 
tinent shall be the time. For eleven years, they had 
found a home among the Dutch, and for ten years 
had lived at Leyden, which Bradford, the second 
Pilgrim governor, has described as " a fair and beau- 
tiful city, and of a sweet situation, but made more 
famous by the University wherewith it is adorned, 
in which of late it had been by so many learned 
men." The year 1619 was the time at which the 
famous controversy between the Calvinists and Ar- 
minians was at its height, and the notorious Synod 
of Dort closed its protracted sessions. The events 
of this period have for us a double interest, from the 
fact that the Pilgrims were so near the field of con- 
troversy, and were very much concerned as to the 
issue. To give point to our description, we can with- 
out any stretch of imagination suppose Robinson, the 
Puritan minister, who felt an intense interest in the 
leading theological questions, who had already sided 
warmly wdth the Calvinists, (little care though they 
showed for his comfort while living or for his memory 

sealed book to us. We have not seen the Life of Grotius by Brandt 
and Cattenburg, nor have we heard of a copy being in any public 
or private library in this country. The fact, however, that it is 
written in Dutch, and has been freely consulted by Mr. Davies, re- 
conciles us to the deficiency. 



236 GROTIUS. 

after death,) and held debates with Episcopius, the 
chief champion of the Arminians, — we can suppose 
Robinson to have been in the capital of the Dutch 
republic, the Hague, in the month of May, 1619. He 
could easily walk thither from Leyden, for the dis- 
tance is, we believe, but about ten miles. On the 
thirteenth of that month, he would have witnessed 
an act of sectarian bigotry mingled with political 
hatred, that might in some measure have moderated 
his dogmatic rigidity, and have had something to do 
with that mild and liberal counsel addressed by him 
to the Pilgrim voyagers, as he gave them his blessing 
on the sea-shore, and committed them and their frail 
vessel to the God of the deep. The most venerable 
citizen of the republic was on that day led out to die. 
More than threescore years and ten, older than the 
republic over whose liberties he had watched in their 
feeble beginnings and their matured strength, the 
aged Barneveldt, leaning on his staff with one hand, 
and supported on the other side by his servant, walked 
composedly to the place of execution. " O God ! 
what, then, is man !" he exclaimed, as he ascended 
the scaffold. He knelt down upon the rough boards, 
and said, with a firm voice, — " My friends, believe not 
that I am a traitor. I have lived a good patriot, and 
such I die." He drew the cap over his eyes, and, 
bidding the executioner " be quick," bowed his vene- 
rable head to the stroke. The people, some from 
love, some perhaps from hatred, dipped their hand- 
kerchiefs in his blood. So perished Barneveldt. His 
crime, however otherwise stated, consisted in his oppo- 
sition to the war-party in politics, the Calvinistic sect 



BARNEVELDT. 337 

in religion, and his determined attachment to repub- 
lican principles in spite of the ambitious attempts of 
Prince Maurice and the house of Orange to gain un- 
warranted power. Among the laity, he held the chief 
place in the liberal party of that day, the Remon- 
strants or Arminians. A few days before his death, 
the Synod of Dort closed its hundred and eightieth or 
last session, and Calvinism became virtually the law 
of the land. 

The mantle of this venerable patriot and liberal 
Christain did not fall to the ground. It rested upon 
the shoulders of one stronger than himself, — a young- 
er man, who had been arrested at the same time, and 
who had reason to expect a like fate upon the bloody 
scaffold that had been left standing fifteen days to 
overawe him into a confession of guilt. It was Hugo 
Grotius. His life was spared, and sentence of death 
exchanged for that of perpetual imprisonment. Com- 
paring those times with our own, it was, in political 
respects, as if the venerable Franklin had been put 
to death in the party strifes subsequent to the Revolu- 
tion, and his friend Adams had been doomed to im- 
prisonment for life. 

When the Pilgrims sailed from Delft Haven, Grotius 
was within the walls of the castle of Louvenstein. 
Little thought Elder Brewster and his companions 
how signally the theological contest which they left 
behind them in Holland would be renewed in the 
States to be founded by them in the Western wilds. 
Little thought they how soon another Ley den would 
spring up in the savage realm to which they were 
going, and the college founded by the Puritans would 



238 GROTIUS. 

have in Mather and Leverett its Arminius and Goma- 
rus, and that their successors in the old controversy, 
Mayhew, Chauncy, and Ware, the Edwardses, Morse, 
and Woods, would prolong the debate to so late a day, 
and with so various a result. We can dwell no longer 
upon the Pilgrims. We must return to the land 
which they left, and busy ourselves with Grotius and 
his fortunes. Merely observing that the time before 
us is a very interesting one, — that at the date of his 
imprisonment the old Reformers were all gone, both 
those who with Luther had shared in the first enthu- 
siasm of the Reformation, and those who with Calvin 
had figured in establishing the more rigid dogmatism 
and conservative discipline of its second stage, — that 
the age had now come for testing the character and 
influence of the Reformed system, and comparing it 
soberly with the system which it had supplanted ; we 
pass on to our work, and will try to give some satis- 
factory idea of the previous hfe and subsequent for- 
tunes of the illustrious prisoner. 

Hugo Grotius, or, as he is called in his own coun- 
try, Huig de Groot, was born at Delft, in 1583, four 
years after the seven Provinces of the Netherlands 
declared their independence of Spain, and the famed 
Dutch repubhc was formed. His family was of high 
distinction, and to ancestral honors his father added 
conspicuous reputation in literature and law. The 
De Groot race was of ancient lineage, and in its very 
name, which signifies '• the Great," bore the proof of 
its distinction. Its pure Teutonic blood had been 
mingled by the grandfather of Grotius, Cornelius 
Cornets, a Burgundian, with some of that more viva- 



EARLY LIFE. 239 

cious pulse which marks the French and other CeUic 
races. Cornets took the name of his wife to save it 
from extinction.* 

From boyhood, the young Grotius seemed to be a 
prodigy of talent. At the age of eight he composed 
Latin verses, and at eleven entered the University of 
Leyden with great distinction. While at the Univer- 
sity, he composed Greek and Latin poems, maintained 
theses in mathematics, philosophy, and law, and won 
the confidence of such veterans in literature as Joseph 
Scaliger. At fifteen, his fame had gone beyond the 
borders of his own country, and he was selected by 
Barneveldt to accompany him upon an important em- 
bass}^ to France. The objeet of the mission was to 
induce Henry the Fourth to continue the war with 
Spain, and not leave his Ducth allies to contend alone 
against the tyranny of Philip the Second. A youth 
of fifteen, so engrossed as Grotius had been with clas- 

* We may remark, that the Batavi, who peopled Holland or the 
Northern Netherlands, were a Teutonic race closely allied to the 
German i-aces, anJ by this fact distinguishad from the Belgians, who 
peopled the South Netherlands, and who, being in great part of the 
Celtic race, have had little symf.athy with the spirit of Northern 
Europe, either in religion or government, as is evident from the his- 
tory of Belgium. Why tlie Dutch have differed so much from their 
German neighbors, and have been so little disposed to philosophical 
speculation and theological laxity, may be explained in part from 
their mai'itime position, so much more favorable to practical thrift 
than to intellect-jal reverie, — in part from their government, which, 
giving the people some share in public affairs, does not drive them 
into theorizing as the only field of free thought, — and in part from 
the fact that the Dutch accepted the system of Calvin, so rigid 
and literal, — not the system of Luther, so much more free and 
spiritual. 



240 GROTIUS. 

sical studies, would probably be little able to under- 
stand the diplomacy of courts. Yet it is worthy of 
note, that he was thus early brought into contact with 
great political interests, and that his sympathies were 
warmly enlisted on behalf of his country's independ- 
ence and prosperity. He thought more of the scho- 
lars than the diplomatists of France, and his chief 
grief at the close of his year of absence was, that he 
had not become acquainted with the renowned histo- 
rian De Thou, or Thuanus, to whom he Avrote imme- 
diately, after his return to Holland. He had no rea- 
son to complain of neglect in' France. Henry the 
Fourth placed upon his neck a gold chain attached 
to a portrait of himself, and exclaimed, as he did it, 
— " Behold the miracle of Holland !" A dangerous 
mark of distinction to such a stripling ! They who 
accuse him in subsequent years of trying to curry fa- 
vor with the Roman hierarchy might say, that this 
gold chain was of ominous portent, and was a badge 
of servitude to that time-serving policy which had led 
the Huguenot Henry of Navarre to surrender his 
faith for a Catholic throne. But for ourselves, we can 
say no such thing. The stanch little Protestant, 
who at the age of twelve converted his mother from 
the Roman faith, after the father had despaired of 
her conversion, was not of a nature to be won by 
flattery to any course of treachery. 

Grotius returned home from France with the de- 
gree of Doctor of Laws, and entered immediately 
upon ci briUiant literary career. During his residence 
at the Hague after his return, he was under the 
guidance of Uytenbogard, a distinguished Arminian 



EARLY WORKS. 241 

preacher. In 1599, he published a learned edition of 
Martianus Capella, a Latin writer of the sixth century, 
and the following year he increased the wonder of his 
countrymen by his edition of the Greek Aratus on the 
Astronomy of the ancients, in which he undertook to 
complete the translation left unfinished by Cicero. 
He dedicated this book to the States of Holland and 
West Friesland, and in the dedication proved the in- 
terest of his own mind in pohtical topics by asserting 
the superioriry of a free aristocratic government over 
both monarchy and democracy. He had previously 
given proof of the practical turn of his mind by trans- 
lating a treatise on Navigation from the Dutch into 
the Latin, then the common language of literature, and 
also by his success in the law. Yet poetry and history 
seem to have always been the delight of his leisure 
hours, and many historical and poetical fragments 
illustrate the nature of his youthful studies. The 
practice of the law was evidently far from congenial 
with his tastes, and he was glad to be rid of its rou- 
tine by being appointed, at the age of twenty-four, 
Advocate-General of Holland and two other of the 
Dutch States, and also by being chosen by the States 
General, or Dutch congress, to prepare a history 
of the great struggle between the republic and the 
Spanish empire. This history was one of the sacred 
labors of his life ; and, although offered to the States 
in 1612, was withheld from the press, revised, and was 
not completed until near his death. His being chosen 
for this task proves the general estimation in which he 
was held for his patriotism, and the tendency of his 
11 



242 GROTIUS. 

mind, after the appointment, was such as to confirm the 
opinion. The treatise, pubhshed in 1609, on the Anti- 
quity of the Batavian RepubHc, was an earnest defence 
of the national freedom from the charge of presump- 
tuous innovation ; and his previous work on the Free- 
dom of the Sea evinced how well he understood the 
sources of his country's prosperity, and with what pro- 
phetic wisdom he sought to stigmatize the spirit that 
would make a national monoply of the ocean, — that 
free highway given by God. Portugal claimed as her 
own the path to India discovered by the enterprise of 
her De Gama, whilst Grotius triumphantly vindicated 
the rights of Dutch commerce in the East, and the 
entire freedom of the seas. The principles which he 
asserted in opposition to Spanish tyranny he was ere 
long called to assert against English rapacity, and in 
1613 he was sent upon a mission to England to nego- 
tiate in regard to the difficulties that had sprung up 
between the two nations in respect to maritime rights. 
Grotius in England, in the prime of manhood, at 
the age of thirty, with a reputation and achievements 
far beyond the average lot of distinguished men at 
the close of a long life, brings England before us in 
an interesting aspect. Into what select society this 
great scholar must at once be ushered, and with what 
delight he revels in the companionship of the illus- 
trious Enghshmen of that day ! we are ready to ex- 
claim. His letters, generally so numerous and co- 
pious, how rich must they be in illustrations of the 
men and manners of England ! At Stratford, he 
might find Shakspeare enjoying a pleasant retirement, 
rare enough for an actor and poet not yet an old man, 



IN ENGLAND. 243 

In the high courts, he could have heard Sir Francis 
Bacon pronounce his profound charges, and in society 
have enjoyed the conversation of the man who had 
ah'eady written the Essays and the Advancement of 
Learning, and who was rising to brilhant pohtical 
and philosophical honors, his official dignity not yet 
stained by fraud, and his intellectual greatness not 
yet consummated by the Novum Organum. Other 
men of note then flourished in England, and still 
greater were coming upon the stage. A little boy of 
five years, named John Milton, lived with his father, 
the scrivener, in Bread Street, London ; and in the 
fields of Huntingdon roamed the stout lad Oliver 
Cromwell, too wayward to submit to the discipline of 
school and to the proper preparation for college. But 
we are sadly disappointed in what Grotius says of 
England. He was well received by James, and suc- 
ceeded in one part of his mission ; but he tells us 
very little that we care to know. He complains some- 
what of the predominance of the theologians, and yet 
does not appear to have been much in the society of 
men of letters and statesmen. He seems to have been 
most intimate with his old correspondent Isaac Ca- 
saubon, the Swiss scholar and theologian, who, after 
being librarian of Henry the Fourth, had left France 
for England, and, in the enjoyment of a good benefice, 
was now meditating plans for the union of the Chris- 
tian Church. Grotius listened with great interest to 
his views, and undoubtedly found in them much to 
confirm his own previous thoughts. Both men had 
taken strong disgust at the intolerance of the Reform- 
ed sects ; both had considerable admiration for the 



244 GROTIUS. 

unity and grandeur of the old church ; both were far 
from being admirers of Calvinism.* 

It is evident that the mind of Grotius was becom- 
ing deeply interested in theological questions, and that 
whilenn England he thought more of the point at 
issue between the Calvinists and Arminians than of 
anything else. King James was at that time upon 
the fence in regard to this subject, and told Grotius 
that both doctrines deserved toleration. He had not 
yet fully seen the hostility between the doctrine of 
arbitrary election an d high church doctrines, nor real- 
ized how uncomfortable to kings and bishops are the 
men who ask nothing but the Divine decree to place 
them among the elect. Bishop Abbot had recently 
been called to the primacy of Canterbury, and always 
gave his influence in favor of the more Calvinistic 
principles ; while at Oxford, one of the heads of Col- 
lege, Wilham Laud, was maturing those views which 
were to drive Calvinism from the English Church, 
substitute the rites of the Church for the decrees of 
arbitrary election, and make English theology so far 
Arminian. Abbot took a great dislike to Grotius, 
undoubtedly on account of his Arminian sentiments. 

* It is worthy of uote that Grotius states it as a significant fact, 
in illustration of the scanty patronage of literature in England, that 
a scholar like Casaubon was obliged to put on the theologian, and 
trust to a benefice for support. " I am just from England," he 
writes ; " small is the patronage of letters. Theologians rule ; 
pettifoggers have affairs in their own hands. Casaubon is almost 
the only one who has a sufficiently favorable fortune, although in 
his own judgment it is far from secure. Nor for him as a man of 
letters is there any place in England ; he was obliged to put on the 
theologian." — Epistolce, p. 756. 



THE ARMINIANS. 245 

Grotius, in some respects, had much sympathy with 
the rising party of Laud, aUhough by no means the 
friend of its subsequent intolerance.* 

Upon his return, he became deeply involved in the 
theological strifes that had been long agitating Hol- 
land. His views had been decided for several years, 
but he had not been prominent in rehgious controver- 
sy. The increasing bitterness of sectarian rancor 
seems to have led him to receive gladly the office of 
Pensionary or Syndic of Rotterdam, upon such terms 
as exempted him from removal, and entitled him to a 
se^t in the assembly of the States General. This of- 
fice was the more pleasing to Grotius, as it brought 
him into relations of intimacy with his old friend, the 
illustrious Barneveldt, who. for nine years had per- 
formed its duties, and had now become Grand Pensio- 
nary of Holland. How intimately the fate of both 
men was to be connected we have seen. A few words 
we may be allowed upon the cause of the catastrophe. 

The cause of the separation of the States of Hol- 
land from Spain was religion. Philip the Second, that 
worst of bigots, undertook to destroy the Reformation 
in the Low Countries by fire and sword. How atro- 
cious were his measures, how infamous the conduct of 

* It must be granted, that, while Arminian principles favor hu- 
man freedom by ascribing free agency to man, those who hold 
them have been often tempted to substitute for the principle of 
elective sovereignty and predestination the principle of sovereignty 
in the priesthood and ritual. Calvinism has always claimed free" 
dom, civil and religious, for the elect, and favored republican 
government. It should be remembered, however, that its repub- 
lic has consisted only of the elect, and has granted little privilege 
or mercy to those deemed non-elect. 



246 GROTTUS. 

his minion, the Duke of Alva, we need not describe. 
Their designs were signally baffled, and the rise of the 
republic of Holland was the result in 1579. In the 
Dutch Netherlands the Reformed or Calvinistic doc- 
trines prevailed, probably on account of the proximity 
and influence of France, where the Protestants were 
generally Calvinists, not Lutherans. This fact, as we 
have hinted, has had a very great influence upon the 
destiny of Holland. In the early contest with the 
Spaniards, there was something in the doctrine of pre- 
destined election that tended to animate the courage 
of the revolutionists in their desperate warfare. If 
they had lost the Pope's blessing, the soldiers were 
glad to feel that they were God's elect, and the more 
they magnified the Divine decree, the greater their re- 
liance upon the success of their arms. It w^as the war 
of the Puritans against king and prelate, only under 
another form. It is obvious, however, that Calvinistic 
doctrines can never maintain for a long time an un- 
questioned hold upon a communit}^ and in Holland 
their day of supremacy was to cease. We can but 
glance at the main points in the course of the contro- 
versy. 

The leader of the more liberal party was James 
Herrmann, or Arminius, who was born at Oudenwa- 
ter, in Holland, in 1560, four years before Calvin's 
death, received his theological education at Geneva, 
the hot-bed of Calvinism, was led to reject the doctrine 
of arbitrary election,, while engaged in preparing a 
work in its defence, and who, notwithstanding a bitter 
opposition that reminds us of a recent controversy 
near by, was called to the theological chair of the 



ARMINIUS. 247 

University at Leyden in 1602. He died not many 
years after, in 1609, a year before the arrival of the 
Pilgrims at Leyden. Ill-starred man ! a second Ham- 
let, whose mother, the Reformed Church, had been 
faithless, and brought upon him evil times that he 
vainly strove to correct. His position was little in 
unison with his mild temper and more generous creed. 
Graceful, eloquent, amiable, devout, conscientious, he 
adopted for his motto the sentence, whose truth, ac- 
cording to his biographer, Brandt, his whole life con- 
firmed, — "A good conscience is Paradise." He died 
at forty-nine, apparently a victim to constant excite- 
ment, and to the calumnies of those who too often 
think that a certain creed is the true paradise. We 
speak of his merits the more decidedly, as we have 
now the warranty of fair-minded Calvinists, and the 
great denomination of Methodists have become his 
champions. Few Orthodox men of New England 
will speak of Arrainius as his old adversaries and some 
modern Presbyterians have done. The language on 
his death-bed, which is quoted by his adversaries in 
proof of his want of spiritual peace, points, obviously, 
rather to the unkindness of his foes than to any lack 
of religious confidence on his part : — " Woe is me, my 
mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and 
a man of contention to the whole earth ! I have lent 
to no man on usury, nor have men lent to me on usu- 
ry ; yet every man doth curse me." As to the personal 
character of Arminius, we are content to leave it 
where Professor Stuart has placed it in his instructive 
article in the first number of the Biblical Repository. 
The amiable and perhaps somewhat timid Armi- 



248 GROTIUS, 

nius, though defeated and prematurely cut offj was 
not, however, to be forgotten. The best men in Hol- 
land took up his cause, and in Uytenbogard and 
Episcopius, Barneveldt and Grotius, his place was 
more than filled. As to Grotius himself, he had long 
admired the learning and virtues of Arminius, and 
had celebrated them in an elaborate elegiac poem. 
He had always inclined towards his views. But only 
after the death of Arminius does he appear to have 
realized the importance of the points at issue. Cal- 
vinism became more and more extravagant in its 
doctrines, and more disposed to domineer over litera- 
ture, church, and state. By nature gifted with a very 
comprehensive mind, he could not submit to its dog- 
matism ; of vast learning, and wont to admire the 
wisdom and virtues of the ancients, he could not be- 
lieve that men like Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and Aure- 
lius were so powerless in will and so hopeless in doom 
as Calvin and Beza taught, and Gomarus and 
Cocceius echoed. He was outraged by the exclusive- 
ness of the Predestinarian party; he was perfectly 
willing that they should hold their opinions, but in- 
dignant that they should try to exclude from the 
church those who differed from them. He had accor- 
dingly taken a prominent part in the remonstrance to 
the States General, in 1610, which gave the Arminians 
the name of Remonstrants. The leading men of the 
republic were with him, and there was some prospect 
of the success of their effort in opposition to the ex- 
clusive system. We cannot, indeed, admire all their 
measures. They would be tolerant of varieties of 
opinion, but not of intolerance ; and while the Cal- 



REMONSTRANTS. 249 

vinists sought to divide the church by intolerant 
measures, the Arminians sought to keep it united by- 
measures equally severe. The error of striving to 
stop division by appeal to the civil force began with 
the Arminians, although they demanded of their adver- 
saries no sacrifice of essential doctrines, but only mu- 
tual forbearance. They were able in most of the 
States to enact a decree in favor of forbearance and 
union between the parties. This decree, adopted in 
1614, and renewed in 1616, forbade the exclusion of 
believers from the church on account of non-essential 
points of opinion, and ordered the clergy to preach 
Christianity as the Scriptures do, and not intrude their 
own speculations. Grotius had taken a conspicuous 
part in establishing this decree, and used his great 
knowledge of the Scriptures and the ancient fathers to 
confirm its main position. Yet he could not succeed 
in keeping the church at peace. The Contra-remon- 
strants would have no aUiance with the Remonstrants, 
and sometimes interrupted their assemblies by vio- 
lence, as in the mobs at Amsterdam in 1617. In one 
instance, the women of the congregation defended the 
preacher, an Arminian, from the assault of his adver- 
saries, and brandished the stools and benches with 
Amazonian energy about the heads of the Calvinistic 
assailants. In some cases, the Remonstrants, contin- 
uing in their early error, retaliated by appealing to 
the government, and troops were ordered out to keep 
their adversaries at peace. 

Grotius was now in the midst of theological warfare, 
yet he did not allow his literary tastes to languish. 
History and poetry disputed the claims of divinity, and 
IP 



250 GROTIUS. 

several important works were the fruit of this stormy- 
period of six years, from 1613 to 1619. His friend De 
Thou besought him to abandon sectarian strife, and 
devote himself to less dangerous interests; but he re- 
plied in a noble letter, and asserted his determination 
to be faithful to the freedom of the country and the 
peace of the church. A man who, like De Thou, had 
passed through the horrors of the night of St. Barthol- 
omew, might well give this advice, and in some points 
Grotius might well have taken it. Yet it soon be- 
came obvious how much the freedom of the state was 
identified with that of the church. Prince Maurice, 
the Stadtholder, sided warmly with the Caivinistic 
party, and enforced their interests by the vast weight 
of his political influence. He had long disliked Gro- 
tius and Barneveldt for the part they had taken in the 
peace with Spain. Maurice was a great soldier, and 
loved war as the theatre of his greatness. He could 
not bear the check of these distinguished civilians, 
who kept his prerogative within such careful limits. 
He was glad to favor the Caivinistic party, and thus 
at once win popularity with the mass of religious 
enthusiasts, and increase his official power at the ex- 
pense of the authorities of the separate States. His 
influence was soon apparent in the election of dele- 
gates in the several States, and in the general congress 
of the States General. A central Synod of the Re- 
formed churches was agreed upon, in 1617, by the 
States General, to be held at Dort, the first of May, 
the following year. The meeting of the Synod was 
afterwards postponed, on account of the severe oppo- 
sition, until November 1, 1618. The Remonstrant 



SYNOD O^ DORT. 251 

party looked upon the calling of this assembl}'^ as a 
great outrage on national, and especially on State, 
rights ; — on national rights, because foreign churches 
Avere to be invited to send delegates, — on State rights, 
because the jurisdiction of the several States in matters 
of religion was to be destroyed by subjection to the 
general tribunal. How far the Remonstrants were 
justified in regarding the transaction as an act of tyr- 
anny appeared in the sequel. 

Grotius was arrested on the twenty-ninth of August, 
together with Hoogerbeets and Barneveldt. Theji^ 
denied the jurisdiction of the tribunal before which 
they were arraigned, and claimed the protection of the 
laws of their own State. The claim availed them 
little. Maurice triumphed, to the great harm of the 
liberties of Holland. The Anti-Remonstrants were 
willing to allow a very dangerous power to the Stadt- 
holder, for the sake of a signal triumph over the Re- 
monstrants. The ablest men of the liberal party 
being thus under arrest, the Synod of Dort ere long 
held its session. 

The Synod of Dort ! What volumes have been 
written upon its deliberations, what lessons may be 
derived from its results ! We can say but little of it 
at present. Its aim was to unite the strength of the 
Reformed or Calvinistic churches throughout Chris- 
tendom, and it had among its members delegates from 
England, Germany, and Switzerland, and members 
were expected from France. It held its meetings j 
very fitly, in a building called the Doel, which had 
been used as an armory or place for drilling troops 
had a hundred and eighty sessions, and cost the gov- 



252 GROTIUS. 

ernment a million guilders, or about half a million 
dollars.* 

The Arminians seem to have been very unfairly 
treated, both in the mode of calling delegates to the 
Synod and in the conduct of its deliberations, although 
their opponents tried to maintain that all had been 
done justly. Though virtually arraigned for sentence, 
they were not allowed to state or defend their opinions 
in their own way, and were at last told by the coarse 
president, — "You are dismissed; go out!" Severe 
sentence was passed against them, and they were 
deprived of their offices, both ecclesiastical and acade- 
mical. Subsequently, these decrees were confirmed 
by the States General, and severe penalties attached 
to teaching the liberal theology.t When the sentence 
was read to them by the political commissioners, Epis- 
copius, the accomplished leader of the Arminian party, 
exclaimed, — " God will require of you an account of 
your conduct at the great day of judgment. There 
you and the whole synod will appear. May you 
never meet with a judge such as the synod has been 
to us." 

They who would view the Synod of Dort without 
prejudice may turn to the letters of an eyewitness, the 
"ever memorable" John Hales of Eton, who attended 
as the chaplain of the English ambassador, Carleton. 
Hales was a very good Calvinist, when he went. 

* It was composed as follows : — ecclesiastical delegates from the 
Provinces, 38 ministers and 20 elders; 18 political commissioners ; 
28 foreign divines; 5 professers of theology from the Universities. 

i A portion of the States, however, long refused to sanction the 
decrees or accept the decisions of the Synod. 



DORT CALVINISM. 253 

Prom his experience there, or some other cause, he 
considerably Haodified his views. After reading his 
account of his proceedings, we are at a loss to under- 
stand the exclamation attributed to the famous Bishop 
Hall, — '"O, if there were ever a heaven on earth, it 
was at the Synod of Dort !" — unles the full liberty of 
speech allowed to the Bishop, then Dean of Worcester, 
and considerably employed by him, made the place 
seem heavenly.* 

Arbitrary and violent as the proceedings of the 
Synod were, the high predestinarian party triumphed 
in their measures rather than their doctrines, for the 
Acts of the Synod did not indorse the complete fatal- 
ism of Gomarus, or assert the reprobation of the non- 
elect by an eternal decree of God, without qualifica- 
tion. The Supra-lapsarian doctrine, that God pre- 
viously to creation decreed to create a portion of man- 
kind for sin and everlasting misery, is not set forth, 
nor is. the origin of evil ascribed to the Creator's de- 
cree. Yet the doctrines asserted are predestinarian 
altogether beyond the modern standard of orthodoxy, 
as they declare that election proceeds not in any Avay 
from the foresight of faith or obedience, but solely 
from the gratuitous pleasure of God, and that Christ 
died only for the elect, and not for all. The ground 

* The presence of English churchmen at this Synod seems re- 
markable, when we consider how soon the English Church was to 
adopt the Arrainian doctrines. What a contrast between that age 
and our own ! How many dignitaries of England, such as the 
Bishop of LlandafF, and the Dean of Worcester, were disposed to 
appear in the Evangelical Convention of London, in 1846, as their 
predecessors did at the Synod of Dort, in 1618? 



254 GROTIUS. 

taken by Arminius, which was much more rigid than 
that occupied by his followers, especially his later fol- 
lowers, was not far from the present standard of 
Andover orthodoxy. Arminius held a great principle, 
whose consequences he by no means carried out. 
There is, as regards doctrine some truth in what Pro- 
fessor Stuart says of him, that Arminius was not an 
Arminian. The earnestness, however, with which he 
contended for the agency of man and the value of 
obedience place him fitly at the head of the Anti- 
Calvinistic party. In some portions of his writings he 
speaks with more latitude than in others, and gives 
us reason to believe that he was somewhat checked 
by the bigotry of the times in the dev^elopment of his 
views. 

The Synod of Dort closed its tedious and tyrannical 
sessions. We turn gladly from its deliberations to 
speak of the illustrious prisoners who were in confine- 
ment awaiting trial during this period. How soon 
after the close of the Synod Barneveldt was beheaded 
we have already seen. The month after^ June 5, 
1619, Grotius and Hoogerbeets, were carried to the 
castle of Louvenstein, and their goods were confiscated. 
Such was the issue of the patriotic efforts of Grotius 
to preserve the peace of the Church and the freedom 
of the States. Having sketched the features of his 
life while in the service of his country, we turn to its 
second division. 

Grotius now comes before us as the captive and 
exile. What to an inferior mind is defeat to a noble 
mind is triumph ; and Christendom was to feel the 
power of his labors within the walls of Louvenstein. 



IMPRISONMENT. 255 

His noble wife, who, with Roman heroism, had refused 
to speak a single word of petition for his pardon, deem- 
ing such a request equivalent to a confession of her 
husband's guilt, with the true spirit of a Christian wo- 
man, asked to share his captivity. She obtained leave 
to visit him twice a week, and also permission to supply 
him with books for his favorite studies. Refusing to 
accept the small pittance voted for his support, she 
used every effort to add to his happiness without dero- 
gating from his dignity. With his books around him, 
he was hardly a prisoner ; for the castle-wails were 
thus expanded as by enchantment, and Greece, Rome, 
Palestine, were the domain of the illustrious scholar. 
Classic poets and sages. Christian evangelists and fa- 
thers, were his familiar companions. He busied him- 
self with revising the dramas of Euripides and the 
ethics of Seneca ; he WYote the first draught of his 
famous work on the Truth of the Christian Religion, 
in Dutch verse, for the use of Dutch sailors in their 
voyages and in their intercourse with heathen coun- 
tries ; he also labored upon his Commentary on the 
Scriptures, and planned a work in defence of his friends 
and of himself in their relation to state and church. 
Yet liberty was dear to him, as his letters during this 
period show. No thanks to his enemies, it came to 
him within less than two years after his imprisonment. 
By a deception, w4iose enormity we must leave to a 
jury of Christian wives to decide, his wife, in March, 
1621, prepared for him the means of escape. He con- 
cealed himself in a chest that had been used to carry 
books to and from the prison. She intrusted the 
secret to a faithful maid-servant, who promised in spite 



256 GROTIUS. 

of the danger to take charge of the conveyance. On 
a day when the governor of the castle Vi^as absent, 
Grotius having entered his hiding-place, his wife drew 
the curtains close around the bed, as if he were there 
sick, and, placing his garments in the chair, called in 
the soldiers to carry away the chest. Feeling the un- 
usual weight of the chest, one of them exclaimed, in 
lifting it, — " How comes it so heavy ? is there an Ar- 
minian in it ? " " No," exclaimed his wife without 
embarrassment, " only Arminian books." The chest 
was carried away, and, after a variety of curious inci- 
dents, reached a safe place at the house of a friend, 
when Grotius emerged from his narrow hiding-place, 
and soon made his way to Paris. The wife was de- 
tained at the castle a fortnight, but, notwithstanding 
the bluster of a few churlish magistrates, a better policy 
prevailed. All parties petitioned for the release of the 
noble woman who had preferred that her husband 
should be imprisoned rather than ask a pardon that 
implied his guilt, and who had shared his captivit)^, 
and so resolutely procured him liberty.* 

In France, Grotius once more breathed freely. The 
French government had always been friendly to his 
party, and disposed to moderate the tyranny of his an- 

* It would seem from an assertion made by Davies, on the 
authority of the Dutch biographer, Brandt, that Grotius had less 
pride than his wife, and was willing after condemnation to ask of 
Maurice some employment in his personal affairs. We can hardly 
reconcile this with the assurance so strongly given in his letters, 
that he scorned to ask for pardon where no crime had been com- 
miitted. In his scrupulous conscience he may have made a distinc- 
tion between asking pardon and soliciting employment from a 
tyrant. 



IN FRANCE. 257 

tagonists. He had received much personal kindness 
from Frenchmen, and now the courtesy shown him 
when a boy by Henry the Fourth was continued by 
his son, Louis the Thirteenth. A pension was settled 
upon the distinguished exile, and protection was 
afforded him against the clamor of the Dutch govern- 
ment, which had been anew provoked by his Defence 
of the Remonstrant party, — a treatise which he com- 
pleted during his stay at Paris. His life in France 
was in many respects full of privileges, and in others 
full of annoyance. He had much leisure for study, as 
his various productions at this period show, especially 
his" great work on the Rights of Peace and War, 
which was published in 1625. His position, however, 
was painfully dependent upon precarious bounty. 
When, in 1625, Richelieu rose to the height of power, 
the independent spirit of the Hollander refused to 
yield to his dictation, and become the minion of his 
tyrannical schemes. He, moreover, pined for his own 
country, and cherished the hope of returning thither, 
now that Prince Maurice was dead, and his more 
friendly brother. Prince Frederic Henry, had become 
Stadtholder, and the Remonstrants were more favor- 
ably treated. He remained in France until 1631, 
busied with various classical, legal, and theological 
studies. In that year he started on his way to Hol- 
land. He went to Rotterdam, the city of Erasmus, 
which had so long befriended him. But vain were all 
his hopes of a peaceful residence there. His theology 
could be forgiven, but not his political course in refer- 
ence to the power of the Stadtholder and the States 
General. A price was set upon his head, and the un- 



258 GROTIUS. 

happy man went once more into exile. In tiie autmiin 
of 1632 he retired to Hamburg, and was received with 
the greatest distinction. Here he had leisure for study, 
but few books to aid his researches and to beguile his 
sufferings. He was troubled at the prospects of his 
country, sick at heart in view of the horrors of the 
general war that was now filling Europe with misery 
and death, the famous Thirty Years' war. At this 
time he composed a dramatic poem, based upon the 
history of the Hebrew Joseph, evidently as a means of 
lessening the tedium of his position. But his great 
abilities were not to languish here. The courts of 
Denmark, Sweden, and Poland, and it is said that 
even Spain and Wallenstein, sought to procure his ser- 
vices. Sweden succeeded. Grotius met Chancellor 
Oxenstiern, in May, 1634, and at the beginning of the 
next year went, as the ambassador of Sweden, to the 
court of France. He fitly represented the country of 
Gustavus Adolphus. That great prince and hero had 
been a fervent admirer of the treatise on War and 
Peace, and although then he had fallen upon the field 
of Liitzen. in death the victorious champion of Protes- 
tant liberty against the attacks of Spain and Austria, 
his spirit had not passed away. His daughter, and 
her minister, Oxenstiern, honored his memory in call- 
ing Grotius to represent Sweden at a court so impor- 
tant to the Protestant league as was France. 

Now the third and last period of his life opens upon 
us. First, servant of his country, then captive and 
exile, he is now legate of Sweden. For ten years he 
remained at his post at the French court, faithful to 
his duties in the most perplexing relations, watching 



IN FRANCE. 259 

over the interests of Sweden with the most scrupulous 
care, not forgetting that every measure in aid of the 
Protestant league was in favor of his own country too, 
and would tend to save Holland from falling under 
the imperial yoke. Yet he was evidently little satis- 
fied with the administration of Richelieu and Mazarin, 
little charmed with the intrigues of the prevailing 
diplomatists. They who wish to trace the history of 
his perplexities will find them described in Burigny to 
their heart's content. None can help being amused 
at his ideas of official precedence, especially at the 
claim set up by him for Sweden, of precedency over 
Leicester, the English ambassador, on account of the 
greater antiquity of the Swedish nation, which he un- 
dertook to prove by alarming displays of learning. 
How well qualified he was to argue such a point is 
obvious from his work upon the history of the Goths, 
and other ancestors of the nations of Northern Europe. 
Yet during the years of his embassy he often sighed 
for a life of retirement, where he might devote himself 
to study unimpeded by vexatious cares. Perhaps his 
literary labors already had caused at the court of 
Sweden some misgivings as to his diplomatic zeal, 
although there was no good ground to doubt his 
fidelity. He was evidently pained by the presence of 
a special agent of Sweden at Paris, and in 1645 he 
desired to be relieved from his heavy responsibilities. 
With difficulty he obtained leave from Sweden. He 
was treated with distinction upon his passage through 
Holland, and honorably received at the court of Chris- 
tina. Yet his position there did not please him. He 
was a foreigner, and as such was regarded with 



260 GROTIUS. 

jealousy by the Swedish aspirants to office. It was 
not easy to find a suitable place for him. The queen 
was very generous to him, and apparently reluctant 
to lose his services. But he had decided to leave 
Sweden, and accordingly embarked for Lubeck, Ger- 
many. Whither he was intending thence to go, and 
spend the remainder of his days, is very uncertain. It 
is maintained by some that he wished to return to 
France, as legate from Poland. We should judge, 
however, that he designed to return to Holland, whose 
condition had now considerably changed since his last 
attempt. We cannot but fancy the honors of his re- 
ception and the peaceful decline of a life already ex- 
tended to more than three-score years. But his un- 
grateful country was not to have the office of smooth- 
ing his path to the grave. Nor can we think that a 
return thither would have brought him all the happi- 
ness he imagined, so dangerous is it ever to test by ex- 
perience the fond dreams which fancy always con- 
nects with a distant and long-lost home. A violent 
storm drove his vessel to the shores of Pomerania, 
August 17th, 1645, and Grotius, weary and sick, en- 
deavored to go to Lubeck in an open wagon. He 
was compelled to stop at Rostock, and there, on the 
28Lh of August, two days afterwards, he died. His 
age was sixty-three. A Lutheran minister attended 
him in his last hours, and received his dying confes- 
sion of faith. His remains were carried to Holland, 
and now rest near those of WiUiam of Orange, the 
Washington of the Dutch republic. A monument to 
his memory in his native place was erected more than 
a century after his decease. The inscription, from 



HIS DEATH. 261 

his own dictation, tells the chief events of his his- 
tory :— 

" Grotius hie Hugo est, Batavus, Captivus et Exul, 
Legatus Regni, Suecia Magna, tui." 

"Here rests Hugo Grotius, Batavian, Captive, and 
Exile, Ambassador of thy realm, Great Sweden." 

Two medals have been struck in commemoration 
of his services. One of them is emblematic of his 
eventful life, and bears a curious engraving of the 
chest in which he escaped from prison, surmounted 
by the crowns of Sweden and of France, whilst on 
the left hand the castle of Louvenstein is seen in 
the distance, and on the right the rising sun appears ; 
the motto is, — " Melior post aspera fata resurgo." " I 
rise the better after misfortunes." The other medal 
bears the bust of Grotius, with the inscription, in 
French, — "The Phoenix of his country, the oracle of 
Delft, the great genius, the light which illumines the 
earth." 

Grotius died at a time eventful for his own country, 
for the great Teutonic race from which he sprang, 
and for the nations with whose interests he had 
become identified. The crisis of the conflict between 
the Protestant League, who were aided by France, 
and their adversaries, the Imperialists, was at hand, 
and in three years that peace of Westphalia was to 
be signed, by which the tyranny of the Imperial 
Catholics was to be stayed, and that balance of power 
between the European nations to be established, 
which remains in its essential features to the present 
day. England was entering upon her revolutionary 



262 GROTIUS. 

era, and that very year Archbishop Laud had been 
brought to the block, and Charles the Fh'st had been 
defeated by Cromwell at Naseby. By a man of a 
cosmopolitan mind like Grotius, vast interest must 
have been attached to the great drama then enacting 
in Europe ; and as he felt the shadows of death 
gathering around him, with his sighs of yearning for 
his wife and family, grave and earnest thoughts must 
have been mingled for the issue of the great contest, 
and the success of his cherished principles. But why 
speak of his case as peculiar? The world is always 
passing through a crisis, and to all dying men the 
curtain that is shutting earthly scenes from their 
view throws an impenetrable veil over affairs whose 
result the mind craves almost with agony to know. 

We turn now from our survey of the life of Hugo 
Grotius, to speak more particularly of his works and 
character. His works we cannot mention even' by 
name, so numerous are they. We shall speak of 
them by classes, and cannot dwell at any length 
except upon two of these classes. 

We have not been at pains to examine his labors 
in classical philology. We only know enough of 
them to move us to wonder at the extent of the learn- 
ing, and the force of the perseverance, that enabled 
him to shed so much light upon Capella, Aratus, and 
Stobseus, Lucan, Euripides, and Tacitus. The reader 
of any of his works, upon whatever subject, must be 
convinced that the whole world of Greek and Roman 
thought and expression was as familiar to him as the 
affairs of his own day. 



I 

HIS pol/Ms. 263 

Nor have we anything to say of his various politi- 
cal publications, whether relating to the laws of 
Holland, the freedom of the seas, the jurisprudence of 
Rome, or the rights of the magistracy in matters of 
rehgion. These made him famous in his day, but 
have little interest for our own time. 

Of his historical treatises we have met only with his 
most mature and favorite work, the Belgic Annals. 
Its impartiality in treating of the author's personal 
enemies is remarkable. Its style evinces in every line 
his admiration of Tacitus, although it by no means 
persuades us to say with Schroeckh, that he has 
surpassed the illustrious Roman whom he strove to 
imitate. 

As to the poems of Grotius, we have seen little to 
admire in them, except the elaborate structure of the 
Latin verse, and the copiousness and general perti- 
nence of the classical allusions. The flowers of fancy 
seem rather to be taken from an ancient herbarium 
than from a living garden. It is very strange to us, 
that, in the age of Spenser and Shakspeare and Mil- 
ton, men could be found, like Scaliger and Casaubon, 
to rank such artificial efforts among the master-pieces 
of poetical composition. Yet we must be sparing of 
our censure, and remember how much the scholars 
of that period lived in the classical past. We may 
fitly ask, Where would Milton have stood as a poet, if 
he had confined himself to the ancient language 
which he and Grotius so adroitly used? Who would 
have spoken his name in our time, if he had left only 
his Latin poems, with no Comus or Paradise Lost to 
commend him to English hearts ? Perhaps, if begun 



264 GROTIUS. 

in Latin, his great poem might have justified the com- 
parison of Johnson, and the Adam of Milton spoken 
somewhat Hke the Adamus Exul of Grotius.* 

It is as a theologian and moralist that Grotius has 
chief interest in our eyes, and principal importance in 
this age. His position in both of these characters 
connects his name with the most momentous ques- 
tions at present agitated. Christendom has gone 
through one of its great cycles of thought since his 
day, and in theology, especially, many leading minds, 
stand nearly where he stood ; and there is much, ahke 
in the forward and the backward movements of the 
Church, to draw attention to his name and give con- 
sequence to his principles. 

We presume that his position in the theological 
controversies of his age was more the result of circum- 
stances than of choice. He was not a theologian by 
profession. Always devotedly attached to the Chris- 
tian religion, he found himself moved gradually, by 
the state of the church and the claims of his country, 

* As we mention these two names, both so eminent in scholar- 
ship, both defamed by the same calumniator, Salmasius, we can 
hardly refrain from turning aside a moment to compare their event- 
ful fortunes. Grotius and Milton met at Paris, in 1638. Milton, an 
enthusiastic young man of thirty, starting upon his travels, from 
which he was to be recalled to take part in the revolutionary strug- 
gles of England, and immortalize himself as a champion of liberty 
and a poet of the human race ; Grotius, an exile from his country, 
ambassador of a foreign power, his heart chilled by the isolation of 
his position, and his ardor paralyzed by being compelled to utter 
his thoughts in a dead language, without the response of the national 
soul, which Milton's genius so felt and so inspired ? Both, however, 
had their mission, both have done their work. We cannot linger 
upon the theme. 



* 



I 



THEOLOGICAL CHARACTER. 265 

to take sides with the Arminian party. His attach- 
ment to the principles of this party undoubtedly made 
him a more careful student of the Scriptures and the 
Fathers, although we should do him great injustice to 
ascribe to him chiefly a sectarian interest in sacred 
studies. In fact, his whole life was a protest against 
sectarianism, and he joined the Arminians because 
they fav^ored moderate measures, and w^ere opposed to 
the dogmatism that made faith depend upon opinion, 
and based communion upon doctrine, rather than be- 
cause he was an enthusiast for the Arminian views, 
congenial as they were with his nature and education. 
His first strictly theological treatise was an effort to 
reconcile the rising strife regarding predestination and 
grace, and his latest desire was to heal the discords of 
Christendom, and bring together the scattered frag- 
ments of the Church into one fair temple of faith and 
devotion. If any bitter feeling interfered with the 
calmness of his mind and the impartiality of his judg- 
ment, it was his dislike of Calvinism. Who can won- 
der at this, when we consider how vilely he had been 
treated by the Calvinistic party, and how opposed, 
moreover, the sharp, schismatic, intolerant system of 
Geneva was to his comprehensive mind, enlarged 
learning, and pacific disposition? 

His theological writings reveal the working of two 
elements in his mind, which are usuall}^ regarded as 
incompatible. The wary rationalist and the beheving 
churchman seemed in him to be contending for the 
mastery. The contest was not decided during his 
life, although it would appear that victory leaned to 
the side of the mother church, and believing Peter was 
12 



1 



266 GROTIUS. 

getting the better of doubting Thomas. We would 
not, however, apply to him the term rationalist in an 
offensive sense, or insinuate that he ever had any 
tendency to question the miraculous claims of Chris- 
tianity. He was inclined, by his profound knowledge 
and practical sense, to adopt the simplest views of 
religion ; and in his laborious Commentary upon the 
Scriptures he shows no disposition to multiply mar- 
vels, either to enforce a doctrine or to deepen a mys- 
tery. We must place him at the head oi \\\e rational , 
we do not say of the rationalist^ interpreters of modern 
times. Socinus was before hiin in the field, indeed, 
but his labors as a commentator are vitiated by his 
strong sectarian position, his passion for squaring the 
Scriptures, to his sharply defined system, his tendency 
to bring the habits of the lawyer (so strong in the 
family of the Italian jurists to which he belonged) 
into the studies of theology, and treat writings so 
varied and peculiar as the Scriptures like legal docu- 
ments, upon which a special case must be made out.* 
It was not so with Grotius. He tried to read the 
Scriptures as they are, — to give their meaning, and 
not his own theory. He was willing to interpret some 
passages in a way to offend his friends, and to leave 
those passages to their obvious sense which dogmatism 
had sought to enlist upon his side. He has been re- 
peatedly charged with maintaining Socinian views, 

* The Socinian school, originating among lawyers, has all the 
Aristotelian acuteness of the Calvinistic, and errs by too great 
passion for dialectic completeness. Both schools make too little 
account of faith in the Christian sense, in distinction from belief, 
both give to dogma more emphasis than to life. 



HIS THEOLOGY. 267 

because in some points he agreed with the interpreta- 
tion of the Socinian School. But unjustly so. He 
could not but see, with Socinus, that many passages 
in the Prophets that are usually applied to Christ re- 
ferred to the events and characters contemporary with 
the writers. He could not find proofs of the preexist- 
ence of Christ in his prayer for the glory that he had 
with God before the world was, deeming a sufficient 
explanation to be found in the fact that all things pre- 
exist in the Divine mind, and that there Christ had 
been glorified, even as the Apostle declared that he 
had been slain before the foundation of the world. 
Yet Grotius was not a Socinian. He w^rote a very 
elaborate treatise against the Socinian view of the 
atonement, and in favor of the doctrine of vicarious 
satisfaction. He, moreovor, applies language to Christ 
not by any means consistent with Socinian views. 
But notwithstanding this, he needs the largest charity 
of the more liberal portion of modern Trinitarians to 
grant him a place in the Orthodox ranks. His Trin- 
ity is more according to the standard of Sabellius than 
of Athanasius. His doctrine of vicarious satisfaction 
would not much scandalize any man who can believe 
— as who of us do not? — that the sufferings and death 
of Christ were a necessary part of the plan of media- 
tion, and essential to the work of reconciliation be- 
tween God and man. His theory that Christ suffered 
not as a literal substitute for man, but in order to satis- 
fy the Divine justice, and make the exercise of mercy 
consistent with the Divine government, cannot but 
seem to us, however, as testing the Divine counsels 
by the standard of State policy. We leave the de- 



268 GROTIUS. 

fence of Grotius on this point to the many of our Or- 
thodox brethren who now repeat his view. 

Opinions so Uberal as Grotius avowed in his Com- 
mentary could not but bring him into odium. He was 
looked upon as a dangerous innovator, and every op- 
probrious epithet was lieaped upon him. Bossuet and 
Baxter were two of his most able censors, and their 
criticisms show how much his influence had survived 
him. Bossuet carelully traced out the alleged evil of 
his method of criticism in some censures upon the 
French commentary of Simon, and Baxter pointed 
out the dangers of his method in a treatise upon the 
Grotian religion. 

And yet this man, whose freedom of mind was 
thought to have carried him at least to the borders of 
unbelief, is claimed by the Roman Catholics as at 
heart a convert to their church. The Jesuit Petavius, 
who had frequent conferences with him at Paris, 
caused masses to be said for his soul wiien he heard of 
his death, and the work of Burigny was written chiefly 
for the purpose of showing his conversion to Rome. 
The reader of Hallam's Introduction to the History 
of Literature may be surprised, after tlie opinion ex- 
pressed by this Protestant scholar, that any one can 
doubt the reality of the conversion. But we have been 
at pains to look over those letters of Grotius which 
smack the most strongly of Romanism, and in com.- 
mon with Sch.roeckh and Luden can see no ground 
to regard him as a Roman Catholic except so far 
as is imphed in his recognizing elements of truth in 
the leading Cathohc rites and doctrines, and in his 
earnest desire for the peace and union of Christendom. 



CATHOLICISM. 269 

Mr. Hallam is wrong in saying that Grotias proved 
himself an apostate from the Protestant Church by re- 
fusing to accept the invitation to commune with the 
Calvinists of Charenton, during his embassy at Paris. 
The divines of Charenton had refused to receive him 
when first at Paris, and when he returned as ambas- 
sador of Sweden, they were unwilling to admit him as 
the legate of a Lutheran power. Grotius shrank from 
receiving as a badge of division a rite which should be 
a bond of union, and had Lutheran w^orship in his 
own house. It is true that he wrote an ode to the 
Yirgin Mary, true that he regarded the doctiines of 
transubstantiation and purgatory as having some 
foundation in ancient authority. But we know of no 
proof that he ever entertained the idea of accepting 
the infallible authority of the Pope, or his right to sub- 
ject the nations of Christendom to his dictation. He 
did not even believe in the Divine origin of the Epis- 
copal power. In this point, as well as in his views of 
Church and State, the worth of ancient learning, the 
grounds of Christian toleration, and the essentials of 
Christian faith, he reminds us frequently of the late 
Dr. Arnold, although far more disposed to favor or ex- 
cuse the pretensions of Prelacy than he. That 
Grotius looked upon Rome with more fondness than 
upon Geneva cannot be denied, — a tendency in which 
he by no means stands alone among generous minds. 
That he had many of the tendencies which appear in 
modern Puseyism, we must grant. How could he 
but feel otherwise than kindly towards a church Avhose 
members had treated him much better than the domi- 
nant Protestants of his own country ? How could he 



270 GROTltJS. 

identify Papacy with servitude, while at the court of a 
Catholic nation that had joined the Protestant League 
in opposition to Imperialist tyranny ? Excomnfiuni- 
cated, expatriated, how can he be blamed for thinking 
that Antichrist was by no means to be found solely in 
the Papal Church, and for indulging in visions of a 
church too broad for sectarian strife and too deeply 
seated to be shaken by party agitators? He dared 
not hope for the catholicity that tolerates differences of 
opinion. There was no truly liberal party in Chris- 
tendom, as now. He knew how Laud and his party 
had persecuted the English Puritans, and been peise- 
cuted by them ; he remembered the bloody scenes of 
his own country ; nor had he forgotten St. Bartho- 
lomew's. His golden age was in the past. He yearn- 
ed for the return of the time when Christendom was 
one, — when the Church and State were in mutual bal- 
ance — an age like that when Theodosius ruled, and 
Chrysostom and Augustine, Ambrose and Jerome, 
flourished. Fie delighted to turn from the dogmatism 
of Gomarus and Rivetus and take shelter in the 
shrine of John of Constantinople, and dwell upon a 
charity without narrowness and a Divine grace with- 
out fatalism. If what we regard as liberal Christian- 
ity be a delusion, as so many sa.y, Hugo Grotius was 
not far from right. 

As a moralist, he presents himself most conspicuous- 
ly to us in his work on the Rights of Peace and War. 
He stands, beyond question, at the head of those men 
who in modern times have sought to apply the moral 
law to the perplexed relations of states and nations. 
To treat fitly of this great work would require an 



PEACE AND WAR. 271 

article by itself. They who read it in the expectation 
of finding- remarkable metaphysical depth, insight into 
first principles, or deduction from first truths, will be 
disappointed. Although prodigal in its stores of learn- 
ing, it aims rather to be a practical than a speculative 
book. It piles precedent upon precedent, ranges 
through classic historians and poets, ancient customs 
and modern instances, in order to prove what man- 
kind have regarded as the laws of peace and war. 
Roman jurisprudence and Christian antiquity are 
equally consulted. Without any very bold attempt to 
apply Christian morahty to the removal of war, as in 
itself utterly wrong, the author gathers all available 
evidence in favor of the more humane international 
policy, striving to subject the ambition of princes and 
the passions of the people to rules of justice, and to 
bring on the day when all disputes shall be adjusted 
by peaceful tribunals. 

Unsatisfactory as the work of Grotius may be to us 
in our present stage of civilization, it was a great 
advance upon any thing extant in his own time. It 
was another proof of the catholicity of his soul, — his 
yearning for that universal unity which was his heart's 
desire in reference to politics as to religion. Let not 
our ardent philanthropists overlook or dishonor him. 
He desired to reconstruct European society, that had 
been so shattered in the previous centory, — to unite 
the nations in a generous cummunity, as well as the 
sects in a comprehensive church. Let not the specu- 
lative reformer, who meditates upon the sins of man- 
kind, and points out their remedy in the abstractions 
of a purely spirtitual code, despise the practical reform- 



272 GROTITJS. 

ev, who has confronted Avrong in real Hfe, and by his 
moderate measures won to peace minds whom ex- 
treme measures might have driven into disgust, or 
theoretic systems might have withdrawn from action. 
We will honor Grotius as a peacemaker, quite as 
much as the speculative Kant, and more than the 
sentimentalist Rousseau. He stands at the head of 
the practical school of international moralists. His 
direction has been followed by PufFendorf, Bynker- 
shoek, and Wheaton. Leibnitz, Wolf, and Vattel 
have trodden in a more ambitious path of speculation. 
Kant, St. Pierre, and Bentham have set forth far 
more dazzling schemes of pacification. When shall 
the man appear who shall combine the excellences of 
them all, — the scholar, moralist, philosopher, and 
Christian, — who shall concentrate all the light of 
truth and force of influence now available for the sub- 
ject, and show the sin of war alike against the laws 
of God and the good of the nations? 

We must leave Grotius now to our readers, with 
only a few words upon his character, — words, per- 
haps, which might as well be left to be inferred frona 
our previous remarks as be explicitly stated. 

His mind was strong and comprehensive, won- 
derful in its power of gathering and retaming par- 
ticulars, yet not deficient in the faculty of deducing 
from them general ideas. If his intellect, however, 
disappoints us at all, it is in point of philosophical 
depth. He was a scholar and statesman, rather than 
a philosopher, and cannot by an}^ means be ranked 
with the two commanding thinkers of his century, 
Bacon and Descartes. He did not discern the law of 



HIS CHARACTER. 273 

inductive reasoning, like the former, nor recognize 
the value of the human soul, like the latter. His 
mind was eminently practical, — so much so, that he 
valued science more for its available powers than for 
its wonderful truths. He was not by any means 
insensible to the dawn of that new age of science 
which Galileo, his contemporary and correspondent, 
was bringing on ; but, in a letter to Galileo, he shows 
the direction of his thoughts by a passing allusion to 
his discoveries in physics, and dwells chiefly upon 
his new method of calculating longitude, which, he 
thinks, will be of especial importance to the com- 
merce of Holland. 

He was remarkable for practical sense in all things. 
In his interpretation of Scripture he exhibited it emi- 
nently. His sober judgment saved him from the 
usual vagaries of interpreters, and his course in com- 
menting upon that book so perilous to sanity, the 
Apocalypse, is such as will meet with little rebuke 
from the readers of Eichhorn or Stuart. 

If we are to class him with one of the two chief 
divisions of intellects, we must rank him rather with 
Aristotehan than Platonic minds, — rather with those 
who go from particular instances to general truths, 
than with those who deduce particular instances from 
general principles. Poet though he was, he lacked 
inspiration, — the inspiration of kindling thoughts and 
overpowering emotions. As a theologian, he trusted 
not much in the soul, opposed as he was to the 
dogma that would make of it a passive clod. He 
regarded the soul not as immortal by nature, but by 
especial endowment, and sought more in the authority 
12* 



274 GROTIUS. 

of Scripture and the enactments of Councils for inti- 
mations of eternal life, than in the instincts of his 
own heart, or the witness of the Divine Spirit. But 
a heart just and humane as his was could not have 
refused him assurances of peace. He was habitually 
devout. 

He was a man of large affections. He had many 
friends, and never abandoned them. He clung fondly 
to the companions of his youth. He could not bear 
to give up any scene or object that had been familiar 
to him. For years a sad exile, he never ceased to 
care for and love his country. The minuteness of 
his references to Holland, in his letters, is remarkable. 
It is almost amusing to see how often he alludes to 
the chest in which he escaped from imprisonment, 
and urges his brother to try to find it.* 

His life was undoubtedly a broken one, and his 
plans were much interrupted in consequence. To do 
justice to the force of his will, and to screen him from 
the charge of desultory effort, we must remember the 
influence of national position, the strength of his pat- 
riotic feelings, and the bitter loss of motive and aim 
which his exile must have caused him. To his 
honor, not to his shame, be it said, that, while he did 
not cease to feel like a son of Holland, he accepted 
cheerfully the lot which had been put upon him so 
cruelly, and labored for Christendom as a citizen of 
the world. 

* The year before his death, he thus writes to his brother Wil- 
liam : — "About the chest, nothing? I should be sorry to have 
such a monument of the Divine goodness tovv^ards me lost." Such 
remarks reveal character. 



i:.t:ssons op his life, 275 

Estimated from our point of view, the care 31' of 
Grotius is full of important lessons. We might dwell 
upon its bearing on the principles now asserted by lib- 
eral Christians, and show how near his great scholar- 
ship and candid judgment brought him toward our 
own conclusions. We might trace the progress of the 
Arminian controversy, show the triumph of the doc- 
trines for which he contended throughout the chief 
part of Protestant Christendom, and portray the vast 
changes between the times of the Synod of Dort and 
the recent Evansrelical Union at London. We mio^ht 
set forth in what manner his mantle of patriotism 
and misfortune fell upon his illustrious countryman, 
De Witt, and his spirit of universality, with a far deeper 
philosophy, entered into Leibnitz, who was born the 
year after his decease, and who prepared the way for 
the Kants, Schellings, and Hegels who have swayed the 
empire of philosophic catholicity in recent times. We 
might vindicate the wisdom of his moderate political 
course, and prove how sadly Holland suffered from 
the neglect of his counsels, how long and painfully 
she oscillated, first towards the undue ascendency and 
regal prerogative of the house of Orange, then to- 
wards democratic licentiousness, then to military 
despotism, to settle at last in the somewhat equivocal 
repose of the present monarchical constitution. We 
might exhibit the course of Dutch theology, and show 
the issue of the Calvinistic triumph, first in a hfeless 
and merely nominal orthodoxy, then in the attempt 
to revive the Genevan strictness, and, as a coun- 
ter-movement, the recent rise of a more living, free, 
and spiritual Christianity in the school of Groningen. 



^76 <5R0TIt;sr. 

We might compare the rehgious history of Holland 
with that of other Protestant republics, especially 
with Geneva and New England, who hkewise began 
with Calvinism, — and end not there. But we must 
forbear. 

We must pause from our review of the life and ser- 
vices of a man who deserves a place among the lead- 
ing minds since the Reformation, with a single word 
of honor to his name for the miiv^ersality of his 
thought, the catholicity of his spirit. Other men have 
cherished grander visions of the future prospects ofoa 
race. Few men of so large schemes have enforced 
their purposes by a life so practical and laborious. 
Some may assign to him almost a prophetic power 
in his dreams of Christian union under a Catholic 
Church. We deem him no such seer, however some 
events of this century may favor the thought. The 
catholicity of the age of Theodosius, and still more 
of Hildebrand, cannot return. The giant race of 
Teutons have set their faces against it, and God calls 
mankind to new and unexplored scenes. What de- 
velopments, what new powers and harmonies, are in 
store for the world, we will not predict. It is safe to 
sa}^, that, whatever form the better spirit of our race 
may take, however much society may succesd in com- 
bining its new knowledge and resources with Chris- 
tian love, if justice, humanity, and piety are still hon- 
ored, the men of the new age will not forget the 
memory of Hugo Grotius. 

1847. 



X. 



GEORGE FOX AND THE ENGLISH 
SPIRITUALISTS. 



When Cranmer perished at the stake, Popery 
achieved its greatest triuiriph in England, and was 
soon to fall, and leave the English Church to contend 
with quite a new combatant. That combatant was 
the spirit of Puritanism which had virtually existed 
from the time of Wicklif, and now, after the fall of 
Popery at the accession of Elizabeth, began to speak 
with a bold voice, and sometimes to show traces of it- 
self in the Parliament of England. As time went on 
the Puritan spirit incieased in extent and fervor, until 
the party abandoning the hope, so long cherished, of 
remaining in the established church without losing 
liberty of conscience, gradually came out, and stood by 
themselves. The contest, the fiercest ever waged be- 
tween people of English blood, then began. I need 
not describe its horrors. We all know that, at its 
commencement, the fathers of our New England were 
glad to fly to a savage land to escape the outrages of 
the High Church party at home, and to deem that a 



278 GEORGE FOX. 

better home, where, rude as it might be, they could 
worship God in peace. Our purpose at present is not 
to speak of the parties who fought out the great battle 
of arms and opinions in England—the Churchman 
and the Puritan, the CavaUer and the Roundhead. 
Our task is with that singular third party which rose 
up between the combatants, alike opposed to all war- 
fare, and protesting against both systems of opinion ; 
alike striving to keep both parties from harming one 
another, and destined to be cruelly harmed by both. 
I need not say that 1 refer to the Society of Friends, 
usually called (Quakers. 

Sixty-eight years after the death of Cranmer, sixty 
years after the death of Calvin, four years after the 
landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the founder of 
this society was born. When Williams, an exile from 
Massachusetts, brought to Rhode Island the great prin- 
ciple of religious liberty, he seemed in the view of the 
Puritan church to have carried the doctrine of the free- 
dom of each individual soul to an extreme never to be 
surpassed in extravagance, nor sufficiently to be con- 
demned for enormity. Yet, at that time in the mother 
country which Williams had so lately left, a thought- 
ful boy of twelve was beginning to cherish impulses 
that were in the end to make of him so earnest a 
champion of spiritual freedom as to strike the founder 
of Rhode Island with horror, and move him, in some 
respects, to forget alike the courtesy of the gentleman 
and the charity of the Christian. At the time men- 
tioned, this boy was living in the humble cottage of 
his father, who was a respectable weaver of Drayton, 
Leicestershire, England. He enjoyed few privileges 



EARLY LIFE. 279 

of education, and was taught little if any more than 
to read and write. He tells us in his journal that he 
was an unusually grave child, and when he saw old 
people carrying themselves lightly he would say to him- 
self, '• If ever I come to be a man, surely I should not 
do so, nor be so wanton." He writes also, that at 
eleven years of age he knew pureness and righteous- 
ness, for, while he was a child, he was " taught so as 
to be kept pure." As is generally the case with a 
sober boy, his relatives wished him to be a minister, 
but others advised the contrary, and their counsel pro- 
bably coinciding better with the father's limited means, 
he was put with a man who was a shoemaker by 
trade, and who dealt in wool and cattle. Whilst in 
this business the youth proved his honesty in all his 
dealings, and took every occasion to give himself to 
serious thought. His master employed him frequently 
to tend his flocks. Many a day undoubtedly, as he 
w^as alone with his flocks in the field, he felt the first 
movings of that spirit that made him what he after- 
wards became. Of George Fox, the young shepherd 
of Drayton, as well as of Amos, the shepherd of Te- 
koah, it could be said : — '• I was no prophet, nor was 
I a prophet's son, but I was an herdsman, and the 
Lord took me as I followed the flock." 

Fox's mind which had long been heaving with 
religious emotion and struggling for peace appears to 
have reached its first crisis at the age of nineteen. He 
had in childhood been in the habit of attending the 
Episcopal church, and although his own severe con- 
science and his parents' somewhat puritanical turn 
must have led him to question some of the doctrines 



280 



GEORGE FOX. 



and practises that, had begun to show themselves in 
that church, for it was then the time of Archbishop 
Laud, the patron Saint of modern Puseyism, yet thus 
far he does not appear to have thought of taking a 
stand by iiimself out of the estabUshed church. At 
the age of nineteen, he was sadly scandaUzed by 
seeing two professing Christians who were in com- 
pany witli him, drink to excess and insist that he 
should pay tlie whole account who would not drink 
with them. This circumstance shocked him so from 
the want of sobriety and justice shown, that he left 
the place, went home, and unable to sleep he passed 
the whole night walking to and fro, lamenting the 
wickedness of the church, and crying out to God for 
salvation. He soon afterwards felt such strong im- 
pressions upon his mind, that he thought himself 
commanded of God to leave home and friends and 
travel through the country in search of light. We 
may call this journey the second stage in his prepara- 
tion, as his previous life had been the first. 

It is very easy to throw ridicule upon these events 
and his whole subsequent career. But he was in 
earnest — an earnest seeker for truth ; and if there is 
any condition in which the mind of man deserves to 
be studied with seriousness and interest, it is in its 
endeavors after spiritual peace. In this condition, all 
earnest men should be regarded with respect, as being 
clothed with something of the dignity of that divine 
truth which they would find and serve. Who of us 
who can watch with anxious solicitude the agonizing 
struggles of Luther in his convent or Loyola in his 



A SEEKER. 281 

princely castle will scorn or despise the yearnings of 
Georg-e Fox for the true lio^ht. 

For upwards of a year, he continued to travel, a 
restless pilgrim he knew not whither. In the course 
of this journey, he visited London, and there formed 
darker views than ever of the state of the church and 
the world. He every where found kind people who 
were desirous of putting him upon what seemed to 
them the true path. These persons were generally of 
the Puritan stamp, and George whilst he appreciated 
their kindness felt as little satisfaction from their doc- 
trines as he had felt in the doctrines of the Episcopal 
church. 

Returning home to his relatives his friends received 
him kindly, notwithstanding their misgivings at his 
peculiar state of mind. Some advised him to marry, 
others urged him to become a soldier, hoping either by 
the cares of a family or the excitement of w^ar to cure 
him of his distraction. But George was not to find 
peace from such counsels. He was moved onward by a 
power which he could neither comprehend nor dis- 
obey. He continued to live at liome or in the vicinity 
about a year, still seeking light, and often passing 
nights without sleep, and walking by himself ab- 
sorbed in thought, and distracted with anxiety. The 
minister of his native town, the priest Stevens, 
frequently called to see him, but instead of affording 
any lighf. seemed to George sadly ignorant of Chris- 
tianity, and to have allowed, that the poor weaver's son 
had taught him some wholly new truths. Fox saw 
his emptiness, and was disgusted with his mode of 



282 GEORGE FOX. 

making use of private conversations in his pulpit dis- 
courses. 

The young seeker is not at rest, but a voice within 
assures him that peace is to be found, and once nnore 
he leaves home and friends, a pilgrim not to Jerusalem 
or some tomb of the saints, but towards truth wher- 
ever it might shine. This second journey closes liis 
spiritual apprenticeship, of which it may be considered 
as constituting the third stage. At its beginning he 
was a trembling learner, at its end he was a confident 
teacher. On his way he tried every available means 
of learning the truth. He called on those of the 
"priests," as he called the established clergy, who 
were conspicuous for their knowledge or gifts, to see 
if they could help him. But bred up as they had 
been in the church of Archbishop Laud, and still 
narrowed and crushed by a bigotry and formalism that 
survived its great fosterer, who that very year per- 
ished upon the block, they could do little for a living 
and yearning soul like Fox. He wanted something 
more than their church machinery, their formal wor- 
ship, their written prayers and their spiritless sermons. 
The first one whom he consulted advised him lo take 
tobacco and sing psalms. But the drug was loath- 
some to him, and the psalms he was too sad to sing. 
This priest, moreover, scandalized George by telling 
his confessions of sin and want, so that the story got 
out even among the milk-maids. He travelled seven 
miles further to another priest, who was called an 
experienced man, but found him "an empty hollow 
cask." He then went to Dr. Cradock, a noted Doctor 
of Divinity, and asked him as to the ground and cure 



CRISIS OF HIS MTND. 283 

of spiritual troubles. Tlie Dr. gave him some com- 
mon-place answer out of the catechism, and during 
the walk in the garden seeing his absorbed guest 
tread upon one of the beds, he broke out into a violent 
passion which convinced George that a man might be 
styled D.D. and yet without the true light. He tried 
one more priest, a man of high account, who advised 
him to take physic and be bled. Poor George felt 
that they were all miserable comforters ; and sick at 
heart he passed through the crowds of Christmas 
revellers, turned from the feast and dance to seek out 
the poor and divide with them the earnings which his 
frugal life enabled him to hoard. It now became with 
him a settled conviction, that it was not an education 
at Oxford or Cambridge that made a man minister of 
the Gospel, and that God did not wait for a showy 
temple to be built before he would dwell with men. 
Great light appeared to dawn upon him, not however 
without conflicting with great darkness. New mean- 
ing flashed upon him from the pages of Scripture- 
Still he was not wholly at peace, nor did he find any 
congenial minds to walk with. He had become satis- 
fied of the emptiness of the Common-Prayer-men, as he 
called the Episcopalians, and turning to the dissenters 
he found them, notwithstanding their frequent tender 
interest in him, wholly unable to meet his wants. 
Unable to rely upon such outward aids, he turned the 
more devoutly to God and his own soul, and was 
not left desolate. The crisis of his life came. He 
saw clearly the contest that had so long been going 
on within his soul — the contest between the flesh and 
the Spirit, the world and Christ. Voices and visions 



284 GEORGE FOX. 

assured him that tlie Spirit had won the mastery, and 
that Christ by the true and saving hghthad triumphed 
within his soul. His apprenticeship was ended. The 
son of the weaver, the shepherd of Leicestershire went 
forth upon his mission. From the depth of his soul 
he could now say of himself, " I was no prophet, 
nor the son of a prophet. I was an herdsman, and 
the Lord took me and bade me go and prophesy." 
His wliole subsequent career was but the develop- 
ment of his own personal experience, the application 
of its lesson to the souls of other men. It was not at 
once indeed that all the consequences of his first prin- 
ciple appeared to him. Gradually his system was ma- 
tured by him, but it was all contained in the one truth 
that it is not the priest nor the book that can save 
the soul but only the Spirit, that Divine Word within, 
which is the true light that enlightenelh every man 
that cometh into the world. 

George Fox is now twenty-three years old, and 
begins to preach and exhort as opportunity offers, 
now going into some conference of professing Chris- 
tians, and now plunging into the haunts of vice ; now 
rebuking some noted transgressor and now haranguing 
the noisy crowd on a holiday ; now bidding the school- 
master be faithful to his pupils and now warning the 
trader to be honest in his dealings. He produced con- 
siderable impression |upon many minds in his favor, 
but provoked a far moie bitter opposition, not so much 
from the spirituality of his doctrine which compara- 
tively few could appreciate, as from the peculiarity 
of manners which scandalized all common etiquette. 
His free speech and undoffed hat were a constant 



PUBLIC CAREER. 285 

offence to the many to whom his doctrine of the in- 
ner hght was all an enigma. 

A scattered band of converts sprang up here and 
there as he travelled, but it was not until the year 
1649, two years after the beginning [of his mission, 
tliat the events took place from what the Friends 
usually date the foundation of their Society. The 
year when the blood of Charles Stuart, the High 
Churchman's martyr-king was shed upon the scaffold, 
saw the establishment of a powerful fraternity opposed 
to Churchman and Puritan, and equail}^ persecuted by 
both. 

The event which called so great attention to George 
Fox at this time and won for him such foes and 
friends was his public declaration of doctrine in the 
church of Nottingham. As he heard the tolling of 
the be!], it sounded to him like the ringing on a mar- 
ket-day to call people to the sales ; and when he took 
his seat in a pew, and looked up to the preacher, it 
appeared to him as if there were a great lump of 
earth in the pulpit. The sermon, which was appa- 
rently in the Puritanic strain, aimed to set forth the 
Scriptures not only as authority, but as the only 
authority in matters of religion. Taught by his own 
experience, as well as moved, as he thought, by a di- 
vine influence, George rose upland exclaimed, '• Oh 
no ! it is not the Scriptures, but the Holy Spirit 
which moved men to write the Scriptures — it is the 
spirit that is the great authority, for it led into all 
truth and so gave new knowledge of the truth." As 
may be supposed this unexpected voice was soon silen- 
ced and the offending speaker found himself forthwith 



286 GEORGE FOX. 

transferred with blows and bruises from the astonished 
assembly in the great steeple house to theionehness of 
a filthy prison. But these few words were not without 
effect, enforced as they were by the young enthusiast's 
mildness under suffering, and his indomitable zeal in 
appealing to every man within his reach, converting 
even John Reckless, the sheriff who had arrested 
him. After his release from prison, the work went 
on with increased power. In spite of blows and 
dungeons, the disciples of the spirit, the friends of the 
inner light, grew in numbers and in zeal, until in the 
year 165S, nine years after their leader's first impris- 
onment, the first general yearly meeting was held in 
Bedfordshire and attended by thousands. The meet- 
ing continued in session three days. As Fox stood 
up to address the assembly upon the worth and power 
of that seed of God which is the same in every hu- 
man heart, he must have read in the sea of eager up- 
turned faces no faint assurance of the reality of his 
own experience and the force of the truth which had 
come to him in his solitude, with no voice to confirm 
it but a still whisper in his own soul. 

We cannot follow him through the particulars of 
his subsequent career. His history, if fully and fairly 
written as it never has been, would illustrate the his- 
tory of the whole English race during its most chaotic 
and creative period. His life reaches through the reign 
of Charles I., the time of Cromwell and the Common- 
wealth, the reigns of Charles 11., and James H., and 
into the reign of William and Mary, that jubilee of 
civil and religious liberty, when Churchman, Puritan 
and (Quaker were allowed to worship God in peace. 



8 

THE PURITANS. 2 

Until that time of jubilee came, with the exception of 
a short period under the papist James, who advocated 
toleration merely to help the persecuted Catholics, the 
Friends were oppressed by both the leading parties in 
politics and religiono 

At the rise of the denomination, the Puritans, were 
in power. Why should these austere men persecute 
the new sect, the Friends ? What could be more rigid 
in morals, more simple in manners, than the disciples 
of the inner light. Alas, rigid virtue and simple 
manners were of themselves of little value among the 
early Puritans, whether Presbyterians or Independents. 
The Puritans, without retaining the Jewish ritual, re- 
tained much of the Jewish spirit and doctrine ; they 
revelled in the Old Testament narratives of wars be- 
tween the Israelites and idolaters, and deeming them- 
selves the warriors of a new Israel, they were indig- 
nant at the doctrine that would take the sword from 
their hands, bid them spare both papist and heathen, 
and rely for the defence of God's people upon the spirit 
of love, acting outward from within the soul. The 
Puritans, too, were worshippers of the letter of the 
Scripture, fond of applying the minute code of the old 
law to their own time and people, and, of course, they 
would be scandalized by a doctrine that declared the 
supremacy of the inner light, and looked upon the old 
covenant as wholly passed away. The (Quaker view 
of the inner light as appearing to every man, either to 
be followed or rejected, conflicted with the Puritan 
view of the death of Christ, the outward fact as the 
only ground of escape from hell, and seemed therefore 
to be the very essence of infidelity. The Puritans, 



288 GEORGE FOX. 

moreover, were great sticklers for constituted authority 
and exact deference to superiors, and liad little patience 
with these men of the spirit, who would not doff their 
hats to any magistrate, nor acknowledge any divine 
virtue in ecclesiastical ordinations. In the old world 
and the new, the duakers were cruelly treated by the 
Puritans. Cromwell would have protected them, for 
he had too much religious experience himself not to feel 
the power and respect the depth of George Fox's charac- 
ter, but state cares and the tyranny of his position busied 
him with other matters, or made him inditferent to their 
stripes and imprisonments. Yet bad as was the treat- 
ment of the (Quakers in the mother country, it was re- 
served for the Puritans of Massachusetts to win the 
palm of cruelty by the execution of Mary Dyer and her 
three associates. It is no eas}^ thing now, as we pass 
by Boston Common, to conceive of the enormity that 
once was presented there, or to conjure up the gibbet 
upon which that harmless but pertinacious woman 
was put to death. The Quaker historian, Sewall, 
says, that, since that transaction, he has good reason to 
believe, that no wheat has grown within twenty miles 
of Boston. This is an idle fable ; it is not true that 
God has in vengeance withheld that nutritious grain, 
but it is true that, since that time, a certain plant, 
called by many a theological nettle with a five-pointed 
leaf, has begun to dechne, until now it is disowned by 
the nominal disciples of its former cultivators. 

When the crown was restored in England, and the 
High Church doctrine gained the ascendency, the 
duaker escaped from the hands of one enemy into those 
of another. The tables were now turned against the 



THE CHURCHMEN. 289 

Paritan without at all favoring the (Quaker, and both 
were not infrequently the tenants of the same gaol. 
No wonder that the High Churchman should retaliate 
upon the fierce foe who had dashed down mitre and 
sceptre at once by the mailed hand of Cromw^ell and 
his hosts. But why molest the inoffensive sect who 
looked upon war with horror and quietly bore what- 
ever burdens the government chose to inflict ? The 
answer is obvious. The (Quaker was the very oppo- 
site of the High Churchman. He looked upon church 
buildings and dignitaries with no reverence ; to him 
York Minster and Lincoln Cathedral w^ere but pom- 
pous steeple-houses, no more sacred than the humblest 
barn or poorest cottage w^here true spirits meet to pray ; 
to him too, bishop and archbishop had less of the 
sanctity of consecration than the lowliest person whom 
the spirit had moved. Lawyers and judges despised 
and persecuted him for his opposition to oaths ; the 
military class, for his condemnation of war ; and the 
whole caste of gentry and nobility, maddened by the 
recent democracy, that had brought them down to 
the common level, w^ere enraged at the enthusiasts 
who regarded the inner light as brighter than crowns 
or coronet, and who refused to bow the knee or bare 
the head in reverence or sense of inferiority before any 
man. Charles himself, easy-tempered profligate as he 
w^as, wished the (Quakers no harm, and yielded to 
several appeals in their favor, but he was equally 
yielding to their foes, and under his government the 
most cruel atrocities w^ere perpetrated. 

George Fox w^as not daunted. Indefatigable while 
in England, he employed occasional intervals between 
13 



290 GEORGE FOX, 

his labors and sufferings to visit the Continent of 
Europe, to cross the Atlantic, and to preach in our own 
country with great success. It was during this visit 
that Roger WiUiams challenged him to a public argu- 
ment and at the age of seventy-eight rowed himself 
to Newport in a small boat and finding himself too 
late for the (Quaker leader, was obliged to content him- 
self in an argument with three of his disciples. 

Fox returned to England, and found her the same 
cruel mother still. His years now becoming venerable 
did not protect him from insult and imprisonment. 
But cheered by the sympathy of thousands, and 
especially by the devoted friendship of Robert Barclay 
and William Penn, he went on in his work without 
bating a jot of heart or hope, until better days dawned, 
and under William and Mary, he found himself the 
head of a great and powerful sect with liberty to 
worship as the Spirit moved or the Light directed. 
He died in peace in the year 1691, aged sixty-seven. 
The Sunday before his death, he preached in London 
with great power and clearness. He died as with his 
armor on, and with the banner that he had borne 
through so many perils clasped firmly to his heart. 
" All is well," he said, " the seed of God reigns over 
all and over death itself. And though I am weak in 
the body, yet the power of God is over all, and the 
seed reigns over all disorderly spirits." He then sunk 
gently to his rest. Robert Barclay had gone but a few 
months before. The impassioned Reformer and the 
mild Theologian, the Luther and the Melancthon of 
the new reformation went to the spirit-land almost 
in company. 



INTELLECT. 291 

Now what shall we say of George Fox, and what 
of his principles 7 Let his own works and life answer, 
and save us from being beguiled by too fond friends 
or too vehement opponents. William Penn shall not by 
his great name prevent our judging for ourselves, nor 
shall the historian Bancroft by his brilliant philosophi- 
zing dazzle our eyes or sway our mind. Much less 
shall Puritan dogmatism like Cotton Mather's, or High 
Church exclusiveness like Doctor South's, or critical 
sarcasm like Lord Jeffrey's sit in the dictator's seat. 
Fox shows himself fully in his works. Let them 
speak for him. His jounal, treatises and letters should 
save us from essential mistake. 

In intellect, he holds a low place among logical 
reasoners or eloquent writers. His mind was not dia- 
lectic, not remarkable for connected chains of argu- 
ment, either inductive or deductive. Yet he was a 
man of strong reason. Its action seemed to be intui- 
tive. Great truths came to him he knew not how, and 
he could only appeal to inward voices and visions in 
explanation of the results of his rare spiritual insight. 
His reason was better than his reasoning, and he evi- 
dently had in his mind far more then he could say or 
write. His writings, especially those on general sub- 
jects, are prolix, dull, and full of repetitions. Yet now 
and then a sentence of singular richness and sugges- 
tiveness will appear, and raise the suspicion that much 
of a philosopher was hid within the leather dress of 
the (Quaker, and that if science and utterance had 
been granted him, the scientific depth and spiritual 
alphabet of the Swedish seer might have been anticipa- 
ted by a century. In his documents that treat not of 



292 GEORGE POX". 

general topics but of person and emergencies, as in 
his letters to suffering friends or persecuting foes, he 
shows great fire and sometime rises into prophet- 
like eloquence ; whilst in his business papers, in deal- 
ing with men to win them to his ends, in his plans 
and efforts to consolidate the Society of Friends, he 
evinced a practical judgment that needed opportunity- 
only to rival the executive greatness of Wesley. In 
rebuking the evil-doer, the infidel or tyrant, in de- 
claiming against darkness and sin in high places 
whether in Sultan, Pope, Bishop or King, for he had 
a word for them all, he sometimes shows a power of 
sarcasm which, if untempered by a faith so earnest 
and devout, would have appeared in pleasant wit in- 
stead of scathing irony, and reminded us more of 
the satire of a Swift than the severity of an Elijah. 
He had but a rude taste, little sense for beauty in the 
arts, although more for beauty in nature. It cost him 
little struggle to call a cathedral a steeple-house and 
shut his eyes against pageants, poems or pictures, 
however briUiant. Yet he was not without imagina- 
tion. His imagination revelled rather in visions of 
the wild and wonderful than in the minute and beau- 
tiful. No man has made more use of the writings of 
the Hebrew prophets and reproduced their sublime 
imagery more powerfully than he. 

He was no eulogist of learning, either by doctrine 
or education, yet he was always desirous of gaining 
all possible light ; and we find him in later works instead 
of praising ignorance, anxious to treat every topic 
fairly and quoting now a passage from the Koran and 



BlSPOSlTIONSi. 293 

now a criticism upon the original Greek of the 
Gospels, 

In disposition he was somewhat stern, yet no man 
had more friends. Like the pomegranate, he bore an 
interior sweetness within a rough rind. Unsparing 
radical as he was, no saint has exceeded the rapture 
and prostration of his devotion. In prayer, his manner 
was so wonderful as to move Penn to say, "that the 
most awful living reverent frame I ever felt or beheld, 
I must say was his in prayer." If he lacked due con- 
sideration for other men's opinions, or fair appreciation 
of their piety, if he underrated the worth of established 
institutions, it was rather from the prejudices of his 
position, and the pertinacity of his will, than from the 
unkind ness or irreverence of his heart. He loved hu- 
manity wherever he could recognize it, and was pros- 
trate before God wherever he could acknowledge his 
presence. 

To appreciate his power of will, one must read his 
life, and follow his sufferings and labors. No man 
since the Reformation has done or suffered more for 
the Gospel. To something of the mystic piety of 
Thomas a Kempis he united all the fearless daring of 
Francis Xavier. Nothing could put him down. He 
could face a drawn dagger without a trembling nerve, 
and turn towards the ruffian-assailant the other cheek. 
He could stand before kings, and not feel himself be- 
neath them, nor yield the interests of the Gospel to 
their promises or threats. Whatever may be said 
of other traits of his character, certainly so far as un- 
w^earied devotion to his cause was concerned, he has 
never been surpassed, and William Penn has not ex- 



294 



&EORGE FOJ^. 



aggerated the truth when he wrote the epitaph, " Many- 
sons have done virtuously in this day, but, dear George, 
thou excellest them all." 

Was George Fox a fanatic, or a bigot ? Not surely 
a fanatic, if fanaticism be rightly defined as the union 
of enthusiasm with mahce. There was no malice in 
him, for he shrank from harming any living creature. 
In some respects he was bigoted, too set in his own 
notions to estimate fairly the various classes of Chris- 
tians, and so engrossed with his own system as to be- 
lieve himself right and all other theologians wrong, 
and to claim the whole world for himself and his fra- 
ternity. He was an enthusiast too, not merly in the 
fervor of his zeal, but the extravagance of some of his 
ways. While he condemned some of the grosser ex- 
cesses of his followers, he sanctioned many unwarrant- 
able excitements. He could blame James Naylor for 
thinking himself to be Christ, but spoke without com- 
ment of those who felt moved to perform the strangest 
actions in representation of the sins and nakedness of 
the land. Even the mild and reasoning Barclay 
deemed himself commanded to run through the streets 
of Aberdeen, covered with sackcloth and ashes, and 
signs far more foohsh and objectionable were exhibited 
by less discreet brethren. Every sect has its errors. 
Honored is that sect whose errors have been follies 
and not crimes. Let none but the champions of sects 
unstained by crimes throw the first stone at the monu- 
ment of George Fox and his associates. Keep quiet, 
champions of Calvinism. The Quakers had their 
foUies, but what is folly compared with the spirit that 
defaged churches, aiid proscribed priests^ burned Mi- 



THE FRIENDS. 295 

chael Servetus, beheaded Archbishop Laud, and hung 
Mary Dyer. Keep quiet, champions of Episcopacy. 
George Fox was indeed so uncivil as to speak un- 
bidden in Episcopal churches, but what is inciviUty 
compared with cruelty, what was the shepherd-prophet's 
rudeness compared with the tyranny of the Church- 
men who beat and imprisoned his followers, left hun- 
dreds of unresisting friends to languish and die in 
prison — nay more, what is the incivihty of speaking 
unbidden in an Episcopal church, to the barbarity 
that could hunt out the Covenanters in their mountain 
retreats, break up assemblies, and bayonet venerable 
elders in the very presence of their families. If the 
early Quakers are to be blamed, it is not by their ear- 
ly antagonists, the Churchman or the Calvinist. En- 
thusiastic, nay, bigoted as the followers of the inner 
light were, subject as they were to mistake their own 
capricious impulses for the dictates of the Spirit, their 
errors do them honor, by showing their exemption 
from the general cruelty of Christians in their time. 

Space fails me to speak of their doctrines and 
discipline, and to illustrate the gradual transition of 
the Society of Friends from their early enthusiasm 
into fixed system, the substitution of formal precedent 
for primitive freedom, and the rise of dogmatic dis- 
putes in place of brotherly communion. Yet what- 
ever mistakes may have been committed, and whatever 
qualifications are to be made, we must give this de- 
nomination a praise such as cannot justly be bestowed 
upon any other since the primitive ages. Our sym- 
pathies are with them as champions of spiritual re- 
ligion and humane morality. With Fox for their apos- 



296 



GEORGE FOX. 



tie, Barclay their theologian, Perm their legislator, Dy- 
mond their morahst, they need not be ashamed of their 
history. Spirituality and humanity, how much these 
owe to the Friends. In George Fox and his apos- 
tles, the noble principles that before too often were hid 
in the cells of mystic recluses or the studies of ideal 
philosophers, were carried into the college and the 
market-place, and made the creed of the peasant. 
The great doctrine of the inner hght was not new, for 
it has been held by the noblest minds of all ages, and 
in the time of Fox too, by men strangers to him. 
Before Fox was upon his death-bed, Ralph Cudworth 
and Henry More, in their principles of immutable mo- 
rals and divine ideas had embodied in philosophy the 
essential creed which he preached in the stieets. While 
he was upon his death-bed, multitudes throughout 
Christendom, ignorant of his name, had felt the spirit 
that inspired his dying words. If all Christendom 
had been searched to find one man who would sym- 
pathize most deeply with the dying enthusiast, one 
little thought of among Quaker zealots might have 
been the accepted one. In the palace of tie great 
French King dwelt a priest as tutor to the dauphin, 
who had gone quite as far as any one living in con- 
victions of the power of the Divine Spirit, and the 
worth of disinterested love. He who was soon to be- 
come Archbishop of Cambray, the gifted and pious 
Fenelon, in the garb of a church denounced by the 
(Quaker, would have well comprehended the spirit of 
that scene and said, Amen to the parting exclama- 
tion " the seed of God reigns." We will all say Amen. 
The seed of God shall triumph. Spirituahty and 



INFLUENCE. 297 

humanity, piety and charity, springing from the good 
seed, shall not die, nor be walled up within any nar- 
row enclosures. May God give them goodly increase. 
Under their shade and refreshed by their fruits, may 
man labor and rest. Spiritual and humane, Christian 
people while on earth may make of heaven more than 
a dream. Following in their path our race may work 
out their emancipation, and find peaceful civilization 
far miglitier in assuring them liberty than violence or 
war. Already the new crusade, the crusade not to the 
tomb of the dead but the kingdom of the living Christ 
is begun, and its bloodless victories thicken. Among 
the names worthy of being heard as rallying cries in 
its conflicts, the conflicts of humanity against oppres- 
sion, faith against despair, few names deserve more 
honorable mention than that of George Fox, the 
shepherd prophet. The light of God in the soul — that 
was his creed. The love of God and man in the life 
that was his morality. 



13^ 



XI. 



SWEDENBORG AND THE MYSTI- 
CISM OF SCIENCE. 



Of the many noted men who flourished in the 
eighteenth centuiy, Sweden may claim the credit of 
having produced the two most singular. In their 
own spheres — the one among kings, the other among 
philosophers — they stand almost entirely by them- 
selves. To some it is still an open question, whether 
the one was a demigod or madman ; and the other, 
the chief of prophets or the strangest of monomaniacs. 

In the year 1718, these two comets were accidental- 
ly brought into conjunction. Charles, bent on finish- 
ing the war which he had been waging with the 
powers of Northern Europe, was laying siege to Pred- 
erickshall, a fortified city in Norway. Himself pos- 
sessed of mathematical powers of no common order, 
he needed one of the ablest engineers of his kingdom 
to aid him in his plans. Swedberg, the son of a 
Swedish bishop, had already attracted the king's no- 
tice by his scientific attainments, and was called to 
the work. By machines of his own invention, this 



EARLY LIFE. 299 

engineer contrived to transport over the mountains a 
small fleet of galleys and boats, which enabled the 
king to carry his artillery near the walls of the be- 
sieged city. Charles was killed in the attack. The 
engineer soon to be known by the name Swedenborg 
lived more than a half century afterwards. Already 
he was a marked man, and probably regarded by his 
countrymen as destined to make a figure among the 
scientific men of the age. He had gained some repu- 
tation by hi? mathematical and philosophical publica- 
tions of recent date, and it had not probably been 
quite forgotton, that nearly ten years before, he had 
put forth a little work on the Ancient Moralists, and a 
collection of Latin verses. As yet, however, there was 
nothing in this man to give any just idea of his subse- 
quent course. Thirty years of his life had passed 
without affording any indication of those elements of 
character that were to make him, in the view of all, 
the most celebrated mystic, and in the faith of some, 
the illuminated seer of his age. He probably had as 
little thought as his friends, of his singular career. 

It has become a frequent and interesting question, 
what we shall think of his claims as a teacher of 
morals and religion. Was he a profound philosopher, 
veiling his abstractions uuder mystical imagery? Was 
he, as his followers maintain, both a profound philoso- 
pher and inspired prophet? Or was he a mono- 
maniac ? 

Without presuming to treat in detail the many 
topics started by the controversy in question, we 
would take a rapid glance at the career of Sweden- 
borg, with the hoDe of finding the clue to his system 



300 



SWEDENBORG, 



in his own history, and of accounting in some measure 
for the nature of his influence. 

We said, that he reached the age of thirty without 
giving any indication of his final course. Yet, two or 
three circumstances in his early history are worthy of 
note as bearing upon his future development. 

The son t)f a Lutheran minister, he was of necessity 
led to think of religious subjects from his childhood. 
He appears in his early years to have exhibited de- 
cided religious sensibilities and convictions. His re- 
marks frequently surprised his parents and made them 
sometimes say that angels spoke through his mouth. 
Little folks have large ears, and we have his own 
authority for believing that the boy remembered very 
well, that he had been thought worthy of being visited 
by angels. Such facts have great influence in forming 
the character. 

Before he was twelve years old, he showed a turn 
for theological argument, and was fond of conversing 
with the clergy who visited his father's house, upon 
the value of faith and charity, always stoutly contend- 
ing that love is the very soul of religion, the vital 
principle of faith as of virtue. It is not difficult to see 
why it was that his mind turned in this direction, 
when we consider how dry and dogmatical the Lu- 
theran religion had become at that time, and that 
having lost the fervor of the great reformer's spirit, it 
dealt too exclusively in barren formulas and scholastic 
creeds. Few persons of any considerable acquaint- 
ance with theological disputations and homiletics will 
be found who cannot sympathize with this bright boy 
in the emphasis with which he urged the worth of a 



PREPARATION. 301 

true spirit, and the nothingness of a creed without a 
heart of love. 

When just of age, Swedenborg started on his travels 
through Europe, and passed four years thus, visiting 
the chief cities of England and the Continent. There 
was not much in the religious or theological world to 
stir or instruct him. It was a cold and dark time in 
the Christian Church, and the traveller found nothing 
so interesting as Mathematics and the Natural Sci- 
ences. In these he won such honor as to be offered 
the choice between a professorship in the University 
of Upsala, and the office of Assessor on the Board of 
Mines. The science of nature was his delight, and 
he chose the pursuit which would make it his busi- 
ness to study the mineral kingdom. 

Put all these facts together — his religious sensibility 
— charitable spirit — his position among dogmatists — 
his ardor for science ; and we may see some connec- 
tion between his early and later years. At least we 
shall not deem it impossible that the Swedish engi- 
neer, who, the year after his exploit at Frederickshall, 
was ennobled by Queen Ulrica, and under the name 
of Swedenborg took his seat with the Equestrian 
Order of Nobles, should afterwards astonish his age 
by a system of theology which combined scientific 
form with mystical revelation. 

Unknown to himself his education went on. First 
mathematician and mechanic, he pressed on in his 
studies into the nature of things, until he dared to 
venture upon topics which most men regarded as 
beyond the scope of human reason or forbidden to 
human curiosity. He appears to have exhausted the 



302 SWEDENBORQ 

scientific knowledge of his time respecting the king- 
doms of nature, to have made discoveries in the econo- 
my of organic beings, and then to have passed on 
towards the science of the soul and of the spiritual 
world. Yet what he called his chosen hour, the time 
of his divine illumination as he styled it, did not come 
for years. The man introduced to us at thirty as the 
scientific engineer, must continue the man of science 
yet twenty-four years more and until past fifty, that 
sober age when most men fold their pinions-and keep 
pretty close to the earth. 

During these twenty-four years, he published at 
intervals of about ten years, his two great works, that 
on the Mineral and that on the Animal kingdom. 
From these, especially the latter, we may learn very 
plainly the tendency of his pursuits. His mind be- 
comes more and more reverent as he advances in the 
study of the Universe. He feels himself as within a 
vast temple of the Godhead, and approaching from its 
outward walls nearer and nearer the inner shrine and 
sovereign glory. The study of Anatomy in which he 
was a proficient and even a discoverer, had for him 
peculiar sacredness. He searched through the mazes 
of the nerves and brain as through a mystical labyrinth, 
hoping to find the clue to guide him towards the in- 
visible soul and that hallowed chamber where God 
reveals his spirit. 

In his scientific works, we find the essential principles 
which afterwards formed the basis of his theological 
system — certainly his prominent doctrine of the ana- 
logy between things natural and spiritual — the corres- 
pondence between the soul and body, and his theory 



STUDY OF NATURE. 303 

of order or degrees. We do not know of any words 
that can describe what he was aiming at better than 
the passage from Bacon's Essay on the Advancement 
of Learning, which speaks of the summit of human 
science and the way to gain it, by uniting the notions 
and conceptions of sciences. " For knowledges are as 
pyramids whereof history is the basis. So of Natural 
Philosophy, the basis is Natural History ; the stage 
next the basis is physic ; the stage next the vertical 
point is metaphysic. As for the vertical point, ' Opus 
quod operatur Deus a principio usque ad finem,' the 
summary law of nature, we know not whether man's 
inquiry can attain unto it. But these three be the 
true stages of knowledge, and are to them that are 
depraved no better than giants' hills : 

' Ter sunt conati Pelio Ossam. 

Scilicet, atque Ossee frondosum involvere Olym- 
pium.' 

''But (o those which refer all things to the glory of 
God, they are as the three acclamations, 'Sancte, 
Sancte, Sancte ;' holy in the description or dilatation 
of his works ; holy in the connexion or concatenation 
of them ; and holy in the union of them, in a per- 
petual and uniform law." 

To the vertical point of this pyramid, the Swede 
strove to climb, and thought to do it by going over the 
whole realm of nature and exploring the animal king- 
dom to ascend at last to the pinnacle of the soul. 
" Thus," wrote he, " it is my hope, if I bend my course 
continually inwards, that I shall be enabled through 
the divine power, to open all the doors which lead to 
her presence, and at length to be admitted to a full 



304 SWEDENBORG. 

contemplation of herself." From this pinnacle in pre- 
sence of the soul and with the guidance of her divine 
laws and oracles, he hoped to stand on the very sum- 
mit of creation and chant his thrice " Sancte " to the 
Creator. 

But the effort was too much for him ; too much for 
sanity, say his opponents — too much for his reason 
without special illumination, say his disciples. Before 
his great work on the Animal Kingdom had gone 
through the press, the author appeared in a wholly 
different character. The man of science retires into 
the background, and lo — the illuminated seer appears 
claiming to hold communion with God and angels ; 
to have authority to interpret Scripture and tell the 
secrets of heaven and hell. Here is truly a most in- 
teresting problem for us. Here cautious reason looks 
upon the seer with great misgiving, whilst the faith of 
his disciples from this time forward hails him as the 
revealer of a New Dispensation of Christianity, in 
comparison with which all that men had recognized as 
Christianity is but darkness. 

It would be very easy to gather ludicrous particulars 
and make a jest of Swedenborg's illumination. But 
such a course would be neither wise nor fair. How- 
ever erroneous his claims to supernatural revelation 
may be, there is no good ground for questioning his 
sincerity, or denying the worth of many of his views 
of man and Providence. The best course will be to 
consider his own estimate of his mission and the na- 
ture and extent of his labors in his new calling, and 
thus let his career speak for itself 

He considered himself chosen to his office, " to the 



THREE STAGES. 305 

end," as he says, " that the spiritual knowledge which 
is revealed at this day might he rationally learned and 
rationally understood ; because spiritual truths answer 
unto natural ones, inasmuch as these originate and 
flow from them and serve as a foundation for the 
former. I was on this account first introduced into 
the natural sciences and thus prepared from the year 
1700 to 1745, when heaven was opened unto me." 

To trace his mental history through the subsequent 
period of his life, nearly thirty years until his death in 
1772, would be an interesting study to one curious of 
searching into the singular developments of the 
human mind. We are not aware that it has ever 
been attempted, although the publication of his spiri- 
tual Diary must facilitate the work. For us to at- 
tempt it here is wholly out of the question alike, from 
want of time and from the intrinsic difficulty of the 
subject. We must be content with a glance at his 
principal works and his mode of life. 

There seem to be three principal stages in his 
mental life during the period before us. The first 
fruits of his illumination were given to the Avorld in 
his Celestial Arcana, a work in twelve volumes, on 
the internal sense of the Pentateuch, the first volume 
of which was printed in 1749. Soon after tlie com- 
pletion of this huge work, he gave his views more the 
form of a theological system ; in his treatise on the 
New Jerusalem, in 1758, he announced the passing 
away of the Old Church and the advent of the New ; 
and in the volume on '-Heaven and Hell," professed 
to unfold the nature of the spiritual world, even to the 
very geography of its three domains. As we read of 



306 " SWEDENBORG. 

the Swede's prophecy of the fall of the prevalent 
Christianity, and especiall}^ of the old Calvinistic sys- 
tem of justifying faith and original sin, we cannot help 
thinking of a very different man in our !^ew England 
who was at that time engrossed with a ver}^ different 
work. On the banks of tbe Connecticut, the mighty 
Puritan Edwards was contemplating the rise of a new 
age of Calvinistic strictness, and hoping to hasten the 
good day by his treatise on Original Sin. The year 
1757, which Swedenborg declared to be the date of 
the ending of the world or passing away of the Old 
Church was the date of the work of Edwards. 

Five years after his treatise on the New Jerusalem, 
Swedenborg pubhshed his deepest metaphysical work, 
— the Wisdom of Angels concerning the Divine Love 
and Wisdom — a work, which, in the opinion of Prof. 
Bush, contains more true science in respect to the 
constitution of the universe, than all the learned tomes 
of all the libraries of Christendom. This production 
virtually completed the development of his system and 
gave a philosophic symmetry to views that had before 
appeared in an exegetical and doctrinal form. He 
added little that was new" by his subsequent publica- 
tions. The most valuable of his works was indeed 
composed afterwards. But its value lies in the fact 
that it is a compendious statement of his previous 
communications. For the '' True Christian Religion" 
aims to combine in a single volume the results of his 
former studies and illuminations. He wished to live 
to finish and publish this. The wish was granted ; 
and the year after the publication was made he died. 

Of the amount of his composition we dare not risk 



WAY OF LIVING. 307 

an estimate. It is enough to say that in amount near- 
ly thirty octavo volumes of five-hundred pages each 
have been pubhslied, and the end is not yet. 

Would we form some idea of the man and his way 
of hfe, just take the aid of the few sketches of him that 
have reached us, and look upon him in his singular 
retreat. Let the time be the summer of 1766 or 1767. 
He lives in the southern suburbs of Stockholm. His 
house is pleasantly situated, and has an attractive 
garden with a handsome summer-house w4th two 
wings. We may judge of the kindness of his nature 
by his plans for entertaining his visitors. Of children 
he is especially fond, and he has constructed a curious 
labyrinth in a corner of his garden for their amuse- 
ment. His mode of living is very simple, and the 
gardener and his wife are all his retinue. Much of 
his time he spends in his little study and often labors 
there all night. His most frequent book is the Bible. 
He has copies of it in various tongues before him. 
His Library is kept in one of the wrings of his summer- 
house, a room which seems to be a kind of temple 
whose peculiar structure and dim hght made it suit- 
able for retirement and contemplation. Visit him and 
he is affable, perfectly ready to converse upon the 
loftiest topics, and to speak freely, now of his inter- 
course with angels, and now upon the most subtile of 
metaphysical questions. His age is not far from seven- 
ty. His face is bland and cheerful, although pensive in 
expression. He is thin and pale, but not without traces 
of beauty, and with a manner that at once engages 
the attention. He is somewhat above the average 
stature, and quite dignified in beating. He speaks ia 



308 SWEDENBORG. 

a slow, deliberate tone that serves to stimulate curios- 
ity in the listeners. Sometimes, when interrupted, he 
is found with a peculiar expression on his counte- 
nance ; his eyes open and elevated as in a trance, 
and shining with a singular light. In dress he is 
careless, and in manners often eccentric. 

Thus the Swedish seer passed some of his seasons 
of illumination. After the completion of any impor- 
tant work, he went to some country more promising 
in literary facilities, generally to England to give it 
publication. 

There he died in 1772. A fortnight before his 
death he received the sacrament from the hand of Mr. 
Ferelius, a Swedish minister in London, and in a con- 
versation with him insisted upon the truth of ail his 
previous statements. 

Swedenborg died at a time when the world was on 
the eve of a crisis, a conflict between faith and scepti- 
cism such as had never before appeared. The work 
that has been the very Bible of infidels, D'Holbach's 
" System of Nature," had just appeared, and thousands 
were glorying in the doctrine that removed all mys- 
tery from creation, rejected spiritual existences, and 
resolved the universe into matter and motion as ulti- 
mate powers. The Swede might well yearn to com- 
plete his own great work in vindication of spiritual 
realities upon the basis of nature. 

Considerable attention was excited during his life by 
his alleged revelations ; and in Sweden, at one time, 
efforts were made to suppress the publication of his 
doctrines. Yet the number of his avowed followers 
was quite small — not more than fifty, according to his 



HIS CLAIMS. 309 

estimate as given in reply to a question addressed to 
him, although the date of this reply is not stated. 
Various causes have tended to give more interest to his 
system within a few years than has ever been felt be- 
fore. Among the thinking men, and obviously not a 
few such have adopted the New Church doctrines, the 
principal attraction has been found in the fact that 
Swedenborg promises to reconcile the truths of revela- 
tion with the laws of nature, the supernatural with the 
natural, and give acomprehensive viewof the universe 
that ranges through the earths, heavens and hells, and 
traces the same divine laws in every sphere of exist- 
ence, from the inorganic clay up to the essence of the 
Godhead. The majority of his followers may be at- 
tracted by the strangeness of his memorable relations, 
and love of the marvellous may combine with the na- 
tural yearning for minute knowledge of the invisible 
world and the state of the dead, to give charm to his 
revelations of futurity. Yet the scientific claims of the 
system are the chief reliance of its most accredited 
apologists. A class of persons moreover who do not 
receive the more dogmatic articles of the Swedenbor- 
gian creed, profess great respect for its philosophical 
basis, and there is obviously a disposition among the 
followers of Mesmer, Fourier, and sometimes even of 
Hahnemann to confirm their theories by the speculations 
of the Swede. 

The ground of his claim to philosophic depth is suffi- 
ciently obvious, whatever may be thought of its validity. 
Swedenborg was evidently a scientific mystic — a man 
into whose whole mind the study of nature and man 
had wrought '^such an influence as to affect every fa- 



310 SWEDENBORG. 

cultyof his being, whether reason, imagination, social 
affections or rehgious sentiment. His theological sys- 
tem is a vast, and in some respects, a not unworthy 
effort to construct a theory of the universe upon the 
basis of Christianity. He recognized a soul in all 
things, and if in this he is a dreamer, his dream is 
wiser than the materialist who recognizes a soul no- 
where. His system of nature underlies all his theolo- 
gical doctrines and memorable relations. His theology 
is his science of nature in a transfigured form. He 
regarded the sun with its heat and light, as the mighty 
agency through which God created the earths of the 
universe. The visible luminary was the emblem and 
external manifestation of a spiritual sun, whose light 
and heat are the divine love and wisdom from which 
the spiritual worlds were formed. Upon the corres- 
pondencies or analogies connected with the sun and 
with man the chief principles of his creed rest. He 
regarded man as the crown of creation, a universe in 
miniature. Man is made to be the mystical hierogly- 
phic of God. To decipher him is to have the key to 
celestial wisdom, for all things above and below, in 
heaven and earth, stand in strict correspondence with 
the constitution of man. 

The theological doctrines of Swedenborg are all 
based upon the same principles. God is as the sun, 
existing in a trinity, not of persons but of attributes. 
Love, Wisdom, Power, like Heat, Light, and Activity. 
Man has faculties of freedom and rationality from God, 
and although full of evil tendencies on account of the 
corrupting influences inherited from his fathers, he 
does not necessarily sin, but by the use of his powers 



HIS THEOLOGY. 311 

and opportunities naay overcome the evil within him. 
To aid man in this work, the Christian religion was 
sent. Man had become so corrupt as to open the gates 
of hell itself, and allow the fiends themselves to wander 
at will through the spheres of life and the chambers 
of the mind. In Christ, God himself took human form 
to rebuke the powers of darkness, and restore order* 
To God thus condescending, man may draw near 
with new confidence, and by faith and love may be 
brought into harmony with himself, his neighbor and 
his Maker. What true living here begins, death con- 
summates. As the soul is within the body, so is the spir- 
itual world within the natural, and after death, the 
soul with its spiritual faculties, by its own nature, en- 
ters the spiritual, and joins either the infernal or the 
celestial state according to its sphere of life or ruling 
affections, whether good or evil, of the world and self 
or of God and the neighbor. 

Such is the merest general statement of the Swe- 
denborgian theology. It is obvious that its leading 
principles are by no means new. Its doctrine of the 
Godhead differs little from that of the ancient Sabel- 
lius. His view of the value of charity, as none of his 
followers deny, is but the simple truth of the Gospel 
and the constant theme of holy men. The relation 
of the soul to the spiritual world as set forth by him 
is as familiar as the analogy of insect transformations. 

The novelty as well as the distinctive character of 
his theology, consists not so much in the spirit of his 
general doctrines, as in their systematic eombination, 
and in the claim set up by the founder to special 
authority as an interpreter of Scripture and a seer 



312 SWEDENBORG. 

into the invisible world. If all that is claimed is to be 
yielded, the consequence is obvious. He becomes 
the onl})^ authentic teacher of divinity. Yie are to look 
upon Christianity only through his eyes ; and dissent 
from his declarations implies either inability to verify 
his truths by our own reason, or wilful rejection of 
their obligation over us when they are thus verified. 

His followers, although urging his claims upon sci- 
entific grounds, appeal strongly to his authority as an 
interpreter of Scripture. Indeed they look upon his 
knowledge of Scripture as the summit of science, ex- 
hibiting the true meaning or inner sense within the 
letter, as natural philosophy exhibits the laws of na- 
ture within the visible and soiuetimes contradictory 
phenomena of the senses. Obviously in order to sub- 
stantiate his claim to be the authoritative interpreter 
of Scripture, he must do one of the two things: either 
give interpretations that commend themselves to the 
reason of his readers, or he must work miracles in 
order to establish his claims to divine commmission 
that shall hold reason in allegiance and call for im- 
plicit faith. To working miracles he laid no claim. 
As to the self-evident character of his interpretations, 
few recognize it. To most intelligent readers, his 
method of interpreting Scripture, though often inge- 
nious, and sometimes not without depth, is frequently 
very arbitrary, and apparently without any foundation 
in the nature of things. There is something in every 
page of the Arcana Celestia and Apocalypse Revealed, 
that appears to reflect the expositor's idiosyncracy 
rather than the sacred writer's meaning. 

But the great stumbling-block lies before us in the 



HIS VISIONS. 313 

visions of the spiritual world. The sincerity of his 
statements we cannot for a moment question. Nor 
can we regard him, as the author of the tract upon 
'• Swedenborg and Spinoza " does, as conveying ab- 
stract truths in mystical language, and speaking of 
principles and affections as spiritual beings, and thus 
giving a false impression to the casual reader. No. 
He evidently thought his mind so opened that he was 
permitted to see and converse with angels, and even 
with God himself. How then explain this singular 
phenomenon? Believe that all things areas he de- 
scribes them — that heaven and hell correspond to his 
statements — and that the departed angels appear and 
speak as he says ? His spiritual world is too much 
like himself to allow us to think so. There is a cer- 
tain monotonous mannerism about all his revelations. 
His characters talk in his own peculiar style. As has 
been truly said, both ancients and moderns JSweden- 
borgianize, and are little more than images through 
which the seer himself unconsciously speaks. He 
seems to us sometimes to make mistakes in his state- 
ment of historical facts and views of historical charac- 
ters. He shows in his visions of Heaven and Hell 
something of the bias of his peculiar prejudices, as 
Dante does in his visions of the same realms. He 
treats Luther and Calvin in pretty much the same 
manner as the Tuscan poet treats his political and 
theological adversaries. In more respects than one, 
the " Heaven and Hell " of the Swedish seer may be 
called the Divina Commedia not of a poet, whose fan- 
cies look like facts, but of a philosophical mystic, 
whose reveries stand for reahties. 
14 



314 SWEDENBORG. 

The nature of his visions does not puzzle us near- 
ly as much as their constancy and extent. In these 
latter respects they are without parallel. In the de- 
gree, and not in the kind, the wonder consists. Other 
mystic devotees have had their marvellous revelations 
to boast of. The ascetic saints from St. Anthony to 
St. Francis have passed their lives as among angels 
and devils. Luther had his vision of Satan, Loyola 
saw Christ and the Blessed Virgin, and even the 
logical Edwards had a beatific view of the Trinity. 
All men who dwell intensely upon any class of objects 
are more or less haunted as with their visible presence. 
Generally, the visions bear the mark of the seer's own 
peculiarities. It was so with the Swede. As Herder 
has said: " Swedenborg's celestial mystery was in 
this, that he saw and believed honestly the phantasies 
which sprang from his own inmost being. His con- 
victions made him realize the appearances within 
himself, and brought them before his senses. Heaven 
and Hell were from him and within him ; a magic 
lantern of his own thoughts." 

Yer}' evidently to us his whole system of the spir- 
itual world is a subhmation of his theory of nature. 
Let any one read the work that marks his transition 
from the philosopher to the seer, and perceive at once 
the tendency of the author's mind. The book on the 
"Worship and Love of God," seems to pretend to be 
no more than a philosophical romance, a philosopher's 
reverie of Creation, such a prose-poem as the author 
of the Vestiges of Creation might be supposed to write 
in some dreamy haze, or under the influence of some 
opiate draught. Its descriptions of the creation of man 



VIEWS OF NATURE. 315 

and the first experience of the infant soul claim no 
more vahdity as absolute truths than Buflfon's story 
of the first man, or the speculations of Davy in his 
'' Consolations of Travel." This book has evidently 
puzzled the followers of Swedenborg. Although print- 
ed after his professed illumination, they always and 
probably with justice state that it was written pre- 
viously. Is this book connected at all with the am- 
biguity attached to the date of his illumination, which 
is sometimes fixed in 1743, when the work was com- 
posed, and sometimes at 1745, when it was published? 
The author's followers often quote its statements with 
favor, especially his declaration that seven planets 
were originally created from the sun ; and at that time 
Herschell had not discovered the seventh. When the 
planet of Leverrier and the five asteroids were created, 
we are not informed in that or any subsequent revela- 
tion of the seer. 

We might select some of his alleged discoveries in 
science for criticism, but we do not deem it necessary 
for our present purpose. That he did make important 
discoveries we do not question. It is only of his claim 
to supernatural insight that we are now speaking. 

In treating of the man who aimed to reduce the 
analogies of the universe to a complete Science of Cor- 
respondencies, we may be allowed to borrow an illus- 
tration from natural philosophy. The phenomena of 
the mirage are well known. An object out of sight is 
reflected upon the mists or clouds. Thus in 1822, 
Captain Scoresby saw in the heavens the image of his 
father's ship, the Fame, at a distance of thirty miles. 
Sometimes the image is double — the one vertical — the 



316 SWEDENBORG. 

Other reverse. To us Swedenborg appears to have 
seen the world of nature which he had so intently 
studied, as it were in mirage. The natural kingdoms 
rose before him in his visions as if transfigured, glori- 
fied. Everything, that he had recognized in man and 
nature had its correspondence in heaven or hell. 
Heaven was nature in its true order, exalted into the 
vertical mirage. Hell was that same nature perverted 
as in the reverse image. The theologian was but the 
philosopher in mystical reverie — the seer but the man 
of science in beatific rapture. Illustrate this com- 
parison by the not uncommon facts of magnetic trance, 
and the marvel lessens, although it does not dis- 
appear. 

As to the morale of Swedenborg's system, it is gen- 
erally pure and high. There are some drawbacks to 
this statement, we are aware, and in some of his 
views of "Conjugal Relations," he needs quite as 
much as the largest charity can grant to explain his 
apparent laxities into spiritual imagery. Some pas- 
sages of his own early history may perhaps illustrate 
what many are disposed to call the erotic character 
of his heaven. Disappointed love, with his celibate 
life, may have led him to look upon the union that is 
to be hereafter, too much in the light of earthly affec- 
tions. This tendency his followers disclaim, however, 
and maintain the paramount purity of the very state- 
ments that have been so severely animadverted upon. 

However this may be, the general tendency of the 
system seems favorable to practical goodness. Unlike 
most of the visionaries who claim to make divine com- 
munications, he is pretty sure to commend an every 



' INFLUENCE. 317 

day virtue when dealing with the strangest marvels. 
From all that he has written, the central doctrine of 
"Life" shines out. To this he always comes back, 
whether in his theological speculations or mystical 
visions. If he talks of heaven and angels, he never 
fails to urge a spirit of faith and charity as the path 
to heaven's gate and angelic communion. Whatever 
we may think of his revelations of the spiritual world, 
we cannot but feel ourselves more impressed wuth its 
reality by the tone of his teachings, and in spite of his 
unadorned and frequently dull style, we always find 
something in his pages that makes a mark upon our 
minds. We can never leave him without thinking 
that the lost and loved are brought nearer to us by 
the interview. 

He has tried to do for our time what Zoroaster and 
Manes seem to have attempted in their age. The 
theosophist of Sweden strove to blend all sciences 
into one, and with the hght of the eighteenth century, 
as well as the aid of a divine illumination, he sought 
to exhibit the created universe as a vast Pantheon, in 
which every anomaly may be reconciled, and every 
dark feature may be justified to all willing to receive 
the truth. He distances every rival theosophist of 
whatever age in the range of his thought and the 
magnitude of his structure. 

Over some of his pages we are made to think of 
the comprehensiveness of Bacon or Leibnitz, and the 
consecutiveness of Spinoza or Kant. Again we read 
and we are reminded of the visible darkness of Jacob 
Boehme, and at times need large charity to keep out 
of our thoughts the fancied prophets and kings who 



318 SWEDENBORG. 

Utter their oracles and wield their sceptres under the 
eye of attendants little prone to respect their ravings 
or obey their decrees. 

To analyze the mind of Swedenborg is no easy 
task. That he was charitable, conscientious, reverent, 
single-hearted, there can be little doubt. That he 
labored indefatigably for what he considered the high- 
est good of his race we are not disposed to question. 
It is his intellectual character that presents the puz- 
zling problem. Whatever may be our view of his 
gifts, his wisdom or his hallucination, the facts of his 
history remain the same. Living at an age when 
nature was opening such wonders, and gifted with a 
singular power of tracing analogies, he was so inebri" 
ated by knowledge as to defy all the limitations of 
human infirmity, and hoped to see by science what 
the patriarch saw by faith, the ladder that unites 
earth with heaven, and on which angels come and go. 
His passion was for omniscience. Whilst this may 
commend him to the class of persons who deify human 
reason and who talk of a science of the universe as no 
very difficult thing, it will have a very different effect 
upon those who believe it to be a mark of true wisdom 
to pretend to know but in part. To these our modern 
Prometheus in his attempt to scale the heavens will 
seem at least quite as likely to have lost himself in 
the clouds as to have reached the empyreal blaze, 

1147. 



XII. 
JOHN WESLEY AND METHODISM.* 



The eighteenth century, rife as it was in doubters 
and deniersj had its hearts of faith and tongues of 
fire. The assailants of Christianity were, indeed, 
more than met by its intellectual champions. In 
point of scholarship, science and philosophy, faith 
bore the palm in the desperate struggle. Gibbon 

* 1. The Life of Wesley ; and Rise and Progress of Methodism. By 
Robert Southey, Esq. LL. D. Third Edition. With Notes hy the 
late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Esq., and Remarks on the Life and 
Character of John Wesley, hy the late Alexander Knox, Esq. lEd- 
itfd hy the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, A. M. London. 
1846. 2 vols. 8vo. 

2. The Life of the Rev^ John Wesley, M. A., sometime Fellow of 
Lincoln College, Oxford. Collected from his private paper$ and print- 
ed Works ; and written at the Request of his Executors. To which is 
prefixed some Account of his Ancestors and Relations ; with the Life of 
the Rev. Charles Wesley, M. A., collected from his Private Journal, 
and never before published. The whole forming a History of Metho- 
dism, in which the Principles and Economy of the Methodists are un- 
folded. By John Whitehead, M. D. Boston: J. M'Leish. 1844. 

2 vols. 8vo. 

3. The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., sometime Fellow of 
Lincoln College, Oxford, and Founder of the Methodist Societies. By 
Richard Watson. New York. 1831. 



320 



JOHN WESLEY 



wrought no harm to Lardner, nor Volney to Priestley. 
Butler, and Kant, and Keid tower above Hume, and 
Diderot, and Condillac. If we speak of theorists of 
nature, how small and contemptible seems the system 
of D'Holbach by the side of that of Swedenborg ! 
Who compares Helvetius with Cuvier ? 

But there is one thing more rare, as well as more 
powerful, in a period of doubt and disputation, than 
scholarship, or science, or philosophy. Apologetic 
literature so characteristic of the theologians of the 
last century, is at best barren in vital force or quick- 
ening energy. Earnest faith is the thing needed,— 
faith whose words burn as well as enlighten. Such 
the eighteenth century had. The age of Rousseau 
and Voltaire was the age of Whitefield and Wesley. 

Providence appears to keep up a pontilEicate of its 
own, very different from that in the gift of the Ro- 
mish cardinals. Its holy unction dwells ever upon 
some consecrated head. If Fenelon bore it in his 
time, it is not difficult to point out his successor. 
From the death-bed of the Archbishop of Cambray, 
we look towards England for a person worthy of 
being named in connection with him. The date is 
1715. Remembering that Europe was then entering 
upon that transition period of doubt and infidelity that 
has so marked the whole century,— not forgetting, 
that at that time in Geneva, in Switzerland, there was 
a child of three years named John James Rousseau, 
and in Champagne, in France, another of two years 
named Denis Diderot, and that the young Arouet, 
afterwards called Voltaire, at the age of twenty-one 
was aheady astonishing the saloons of Paris, and 



ENGLAND IN 1715. 321 

alarming the court of Yersailles, by bis genius and 
satire, — we pass on, and crossing tbe Straits of Dover, 
approach tbe cbffs of England, and look upon the 
land of our fathers at that interesting period. The 
revolutionary struggles of the nation had subsided. 
The belligerent parties and their descendants, both 
Puritan and Churchman, enjoj^ed the privileges of 
civil and religious liberty with comparatively small 
resHRction. But with quiet times worldliness came. • 
No longer provoked by persecution, nor startled by 
danger, the Established Church and the Dissenting 
sects had settled down into a comfortable indifference. 
Honorable exceptions, indeed, there were, — exceptions 
among high names in literature, such as Bishop Wil- 
son, Doddridge and Watts; — exceptions, too, in quar- 
ters then indeed little noted, but since well known by 
their fruits, as in the case of the family in Epwortb, 
Lincolnshire, which furnishes us with our present 
subject. 

In that place, a market-town of some two thousand 
inhabitants, dwelt at the time of which we are speak- 
ing a good Christian minister, who had little sym- 
pathy with the general indifference. He had been 
for more than twenty years pastor of the village, and 
united with the Episcopal principles which he had 
adopted much of the Puritan zeal in which he had 
been educated. His wife was of the same mind and 
religious lineage. She had so far departed from the 
usual etiquette of the Establishment as to conduct 
religious conferences in her parlor during her hus- 
band's absence, much to the horror of Mr. Inman, the 
starched-up curate. Such had been the good pastor's 
14* 



322 JOHN WESLEY. 

opposition to prevalent vices, that in 1709, when his 
house was burned to the ground, and his son John, 
then six years old, was saved from the flames almost 
by a miracle, the incendiaries were supposed to be 
persons who had been goaded to revenge by the close- 
ness of the preaching. 

At the time selected for the commencement of our 
sketch, the family appears to have consisted of eight 
members, — the parents and six. children. The el^st 
son, Samuel, a High-Churchman in orders, aged 
twenty-three, was a graduate of Oxford, and then 
connected with the charge of Westminster school. 
The second son, John, had been absent about a year 
at the Charter-House school London, and was twelve 
years old. The youngest surviving son, Charles, aged 
seven, was at home, preparing to go to Westminster 
under the protection of his eldest brother. Of three 
sisters, although interesting and gifted persons, we 
cannot speak. 

The people of England little thought that from the 
family of this humble minister of 'Ep worth the greatest 
religious movement of the age was to originate. If, at 
the time spoken of, any remarkable attention was di- 
rected towards Epworth parsonage, it was not on ac- 
count of any anticipation of the renown of the fami- 
ly, but from the strange sounds and shocks which to- 
wards the end of the year began to alarm the house- 
hold, and which have never been satisfactorily account- 
ed for. They were believed to be supernatural ; but 
soon the servants gave up their fright, and from the 
frequency of his visitations learned to joke about the 
ghost, whom they called " Old Jeffrey." 



EPWORTH IN 1742. 323 

If the career of the sons had been matter of 
interest sufficient to engage attention, it would have 
seemed no very difficult matter to predict their des- 
tiny. The eldest had already found his sphere, and 
the younger sons, John and Charles, intended, as 
they were, for that stronghold of priestly conservatism, 
Oxford, might have been expected to walk in the 
same path as their brother, — passing their lives in 
some quiet academic office, or comfortable parsonage. 
A measure of distinction might perhaps have been an- 
ticipated from talents such as theirs, but not the dis- 
tinction of great innovators or reformers. If of the 
two younger boys peculiar hope was entertained at 
home, it was probably of the elder of them, John, 
rather than of the more restless Charles. John had 
been saved from the fire as by especial providence, and 
on earth, as among the angels, there is joy over the 
lost lamb that is found. Mothers are sometimes very 
shrewd as well as affectionate, and from passages in 
Mrs. Wesley's diary we infer that she had made him 
the object of peculiar mention in her prayers, speaking 
before God " of the soul of this child, whom thou 
hast so mercifully provided for." How her prayers 
were granted we shall soon see. 

Leave Epworth in the year 1715. Return to it 
twenty-seven years afterwards. The first week in 
June, 1742, a traveller covered with dust entered the 
town, and, " not knowing whether there were any left 
in it now who would not be ashamed of his acquaint- 
ance," went to an inn in the middle of the place. 
Every feature of the village is famihar to him, yet he 
is among strangers. Only an old servant of his fa- 



324 JOHN WESLEY. 

ther, and two or three poor women, recognize him, 
for he had been absent many years. Yet his name 
needed only to be mentioned to set the people in com- 
motion. It was John Wesley, son of the former and 
now deceased minister of the village. It was the fa- 
mous man who had for about three years been put- 
ting vast assemblies into a blaze of enthusiasm by 
his itinerant preaching. Himself a minister of the 
Church of England, he called on the curate of the 
parish, Mr. Romley, and offered to assist him either 
by preaching or reading prayers. Romley was one of 
those strong Churchmen of the period, whose respect 
for orthodoxy in its old routine was only equalled by 
their relish for a good dinner with abundant potations. 
The curate's wine-bibbing propensity Mr. Southey is 
willing to affirm. Romley rejected the traveller's offer 
with scorn. In the afternoon, although the people 
crowded to church to hear their old minister's son, 
the curate conducted the services himself, and 
preached against religious enthusiasm, in that peculiar 
style of eloquence which is most congenial with the 
after-dinner hours of men of his stamp. After ser- 
mon, John Taylor, a companion of Wesley, stood in 
the church-yard, and gave notice, that " Mr. Wesley, 
not being permitted to preach in the church, designs 
to preach here at six o'clock." 

"Accordingly," says our traveller in his Journal, "at 
six I came, and found such a congregation as Epworth 
never saw before. I stood near the east end of the 
church, upon my father's tomb-stone, and cried, ' The 
kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink, but right- 
eousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.'" During 



EFFECT OF HIS PREACHING. 325 

the week, and on the next Sunday, he preached from 
that singular pulpit, which he undoubtedly selected 
from true filial feeling, however well ntted for dramatic 
effect. Southey well compares him to the Greek 
tragedian, who, when he performed Electra, brought 
into the theatre the urn containing the ashes of his 
own child. 

Who can wonder at the effect of such an appeal ? 
" Lamentation," he says, '' and great groanings were 
heard, God bowing down their hearts, so as with one 
accord they lifted up their voices and wept aloud." 
Some dropped down as if dead, and others, having 
passed through the crisis, broke out into thanksgiving. 

We feel, of course, interested in knowing what im- 
pression the preacher left upon the intelligent portion 
of his hearers. A gentleman present, of a somewhat 
skeptical turn of mind, Mr. Whitelamb, a clergyman 
of the English Church, thus describes the scene in 
a letter to Wesley himself, whose brother-in-law he 
was : — 

'• Dear brother, I saw you at Epworth on Tuesday 
evening. Pain would I have spoken to you, but that 
1 am quite at a loss how to address you or behave. 
Your way of thinking is so extraordinary that your 
presence creates an awe, as if you were an inhabitant 
of another world. God grant that you and your fol- 
lowers may have entire liberty of conscience ; will you 
not allow others the same? I cannot refrain from 
tears when I think that this is the man who at Oxford 
was more than a father to me ! This is he whom I 
have heard expound and dispute publicly or preach at 
St. Mary's with such applause !" 



326 JOHN WESLEY. 

John Wesley is now fully before us. We are in a 
good condition to judge of his character and history, 
aided by so maif}^ advisers. To say nothing of the 
obsolete works of Colet and Hampson. we have before 
us biographies by Henry Moore, who sides with the 
regular Methodist organization ; Whitehead,* who is 
rather severe upon the Wesleyan hierarchy ; Southey, 
who looks through the spectacles of the English 
Church ; and Watson, who appears to aim at a medium 
which shall unite brevity with comprehensiveness, 
and honor Methodism with least disparagement to 
other parties. The notes of Coleridge are of essential 
service in modifying the one-sidedness of Southey, and 
doing justice to the enthusiasm which the High- 
Churchman could little appreciate. Using these aids, 
let us now look upon Wesley as presented to us at 
this interesting period of his life. He is now in the 
meridian of his years, although little beyond the en- 
trance of his famous career. In him, the fervid field- 
preacher, and in Mr. Romley, the tippling, easy curate, 
who declared him unfit to receive Christian com- 
munion, we see specimens of the two extremes of the 
Christianity of the times. We ask. What were the 
causes of Wesley's singular course ? How came he 
by his peculiar views and marvellous power ? 

The son of the Epworth minister, after completing 
his preparatory studies at the Charter-House, at sixteen, 

* The work of Whitehead came near dying out, we might infer, 
from the statement of the American editor, that he knew of only- 
two copies — his own and one other. There is one in the library 
of Brown University, however. From catalogues of foreign collec- 
tions, we judge the work to be no great rarity in England. 



PREPARATION. 327 

went to Oxford. In six years he received deacon's 
orders, at the age of twenty-two. He now added to 
the former Christian sobriety of his hfe a careful and 
systematic attention to sacred studies and devout 
meditations. His favorite books were Jeremy Taylor's 
Holy Living and Dying, Thomas a Kempis' Im- 
itation of Christ, and Law's Serious Call. He di- 
vided his hours by a most rigid method, and soon 
made himself obnoxious by his excessive strictness- 
From the time that he found companions in his 
ascetic course, Methodism dates its nominal rise. 
This was in the year 1729, his twenty-sixth year, 
when he, with his brother Charles and two others, 
united at Oxford in a society for mutual edification 
and Christian action. They lived, studied, visited^ 
preached, and gave alms by a rigid rule or method. 
Hence the name Methodists, although it was not until 
years afterwards that the denomination with its dis- 
tinctive principles arose. Before he appears as the 
founder of a great religious order, the ascetic priest of 
Oxford must pass through a second and third crisis. 
He must spend three years in absence from his coun- 
try, and on his return meet with the change which he 
reo^arded as his conversion. 

Omen of events afterwards to transpire, he turned 
his face towards our Western hemisphere. At the age 
of thirty-two he sailed for Georgia as an Episcopal 
missionary, and high hopes were entertained of his 
labors in that new settlement. Those hopes were 
miserably disappointed, for he made as complete a 
failure, as any green divinity student could possibly 
do, by sheer folly. Devoted and conscientious as he 



328 JOHN WESLEY, 

was, he so overstepped the due bounds in his require- 
ments, and held on so stoutty to every letter of his 
ascetic code, that he provoked the worldly, and some- 
times scandalized the really religious. Among other 
foolish entanglements, he got into a vexing contro- 
versy with the friends of Mrs. Williamson, to whom 
before her marriage he had been thought engaged. 
He made himself the town-talk, by his pertinacity 
in refusing her the communion. His success was 
pretty much the same as would attend one of the 
Oxford Tractarians, who should leave his academic 
halls and venerable cloisters for a mission to some 
new settlement in Missouri or Iowa, and attempt to 
bring the motley population of the place into con- 
formity to his numberless fasts and saints' days. Wes- 
ley, indeed, came very near anticipating Puseyism by 
a century. In many things he reminds us of New- 
man and his party.* His experience at Savannah 
probably did much to cure him of his formalism, and 
after a three years' absence he returned to England, a 
wiser but no less devoted man. 

Now the great crisis, as he deemed it to be, came. 
During his passage to America, and his residence 
there, he had become acquainted with many Mora- 
vians, spent much time in their company, and beeri 
much impressed with the deep and serene faith which 
they exhibited alike in their words and deeds, — a faith 
that seemed to give them a strange peace in their daily 
lives, and to lift them above fear in the most terrific dan- 

* It is worthy of note, that Rev. Charles Wesley, grandson of the 
noted Charles, is now chaplain to the queen, and one of the promi- 
nent friends of the Oxford school. 



THE CRISIS. 329 

gers. No melody ever moved him like the hymn chanted 
by them during the storm at sea. He was led to think 
much of their favorite ^ctrine of the witness of the 
Spirit, or of that interior assurance which convinces the 
Christian that he is forgiven and accepted, and which 
of course substitutes peaceful reliance for anxious wait- 
ing. He was to be indebted for a still more decided 
influence to these good Moravians. A few months 
after his return to England, he fell in with Peter Boeh- 
ler, and had earnest conversations wilh him as to the 
ground of peace with God. After talking with Wes- 
ley, Boehler exclaimed, " My brother, my brother ! 
this philosophy of yours must be purged away." 
Boehler advised him to rely upon Christ with more 
simplicity and confidence, and insisted upon the efficacy 
of implicit faith in giving pardon and peace. May 24, 
1738, was the day which Wesley regarded as the time of 
his first being brought to stand on true Gospel ground, 
and of his exchanging legal formalism for spiritual 
faith. The morning had been spent in the study of 
the Bible, and " in the evening," he says, "I went very 
unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where 
one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the 
Romans. About a quarter before nine, whilst he was 
describing the change which God works in the heart 
through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warm- 
ed. I felt that I did trust in Christ, — in Christ alone, 
for salvation ; and an assurance was given me, that he 
had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me 
from the law of sin and death." 

After a short visit to the Moravians of Germany, to 
avail himself of their counsels, Wesley returned to 



330 JOHN WESLEY. 

England, and commenced the career in which he con- 
tinued for upwards of fifty years. 

Now he had a constant mid engrossing theme, — 
present salvation through faith with the witness of the 
Spirit. Speaking from an experience so full and dearly 
bought, he preached with a power that seemed as sur- 
prising to himself as to his hearers. Whitefield was 
in advance of him in the work ; but even that noted 
revivalist, — afterwards leader of the Calvinistic branch 
of the Methodists, as Wesley was of the Arminian 
branch, — Whitefield, gifted perhaps in voice and man- 
ner as no preacher ever was before, soon found himself 
second in influence to one by no means conspicuous 
for personal graces, or noted for native eloquence. In- 
duced at first by Whitefield's urgency, to break through 
the decorum deemed binding upon a minister of the 
English Church, Wesley preached first in the open air 
at Bristol, in 1739, and soon found himself obliged to 
continue the practice from necessity, since the pulpits 
of his Episcopal brethren were generally closed against 
him,'and moreover no edifice would have been sufficient 
to hold the vast assemblies which he frequently ad- 
dressed. 

We thus see the train of influences that made him 
what he was when he appeared in the village of his 
birth, and preached with such power, standing upon 
his father's tomb. Yet it was not until two years after 
his alleged conversion, that Methodism appeared in 
the form of a distinct organization. In 1740, Wesley 
separated from the Moravians, and to that date Metho- 
dists ascribe the rise of their great denomination. In 
1744, four years afterwards, the first conference of 



HIS MINISTRY. 33i 

Methodist preachers was held, and in 1784, the arti- 
cles were drawn up which provided for the discipline 
of the order after the founder's death, and the decisive 
steps were taken which gave to the American branch 
of the fraternity distinct superintendents, or bishops, as 
they were afterwards called. 

The period of Wesley's noted public ministry is be- 
fore us, — a subject of intense interest. Yet we can 
but glance over its eventful scenes. Think as we 
may of the wisdom of his system or the truth of his 
doctrines, we must all allow that he w^as a true soldier 
of the cross, and shrank from no opportunity of serv- 
ing his Master's cause. Nothing in history is more 
remarkable than his conduct in the midst of mobs 
that sought his life ; and no scenes in the progress of 
Christianity are more touching than some that may be 
chosen from his career of itinerancy. He never quail- 
ed before the most infuriated mob, and almost always 
lulled the storm to rest. Upon these transactions 
Southey is more eloquent in the preacher's praise than 
even Moore or Watson. 

In one case when the house was beset by a great 
crowd, who cried out for him, and declared that they 
would have him, — " Bring out the minister, we will 
have the minister !" — he simply desired one of his 
friends to invite the captain of the mob into the house. 
The fellow came, and was so worked upon — whether 
soothed or awed — as to seem an entirely different per- 
son ; and by the charm of Wesley's address, two or 
three of the man's companions went through the same 
change. Wesley afterwards went out, and, standing 
upon a chair, addressed the mob. The cry was now 



332 JOHN WESLEY. 

very unlike the former one : " The gentleman is an 
honest gentleman, and they that seek for his blood 
must spill oiirs first." In another instance, he had 
been seized and bruised by a mob. He appealed to 
them to give him a hearing, and, obtaining at length 
a moment's silence, immediately in that clear and 
moving voice of his began to pray. The man who 
had headed the rabble, and who had been prize-fighter 
at a bear-garden, was so wrought upon as to turn and 
say : — " Sir, I will spend my life for you ! Follow me, 
and not one here shall touch a hair of your head." 

Why should the populace have been so enraged at 
a movement so pacific as that of Methodism? In 
part, probably, on account of the rebuke apphed to 
prevalent sins, and in part from the novelty and 
strangeness of the meetings. There was undoubtedly 
some offence against good taste in the exciting 
method of the preachers ; but an English mob has 
never shown any great horror of bad rhetoric or of 
overmuch vehemence. It was the conversion of their 
friends and neighbors that stirred up the wrath of the 
crowd. Once in a while, moreover, some strait-laced 
Tory was found conniving at the outrages of the rab- 
ble. Wesley tells a curious story of the arrest of a 
score of Methodists, who were immediately put into a 
wagon, and dragged to the justice's. Their accusers 
were asked to state the ground of the complaint, and 
seemed at this to be struck dumb. At last, one of 
them cried out, — " Why, they pretend to be better 
than other people ; and besides, they pray from morn- 
ing till night." The magistrate asked if they had 
done nothing else. " Yes, sir," said an old man, " they 



SCENES OP ITINERANCY. 333 

have convarted my wife, an't please your worship. 
Till she went among them, she had such a tongue ! 
And now she is quiet as a lamb." " Carry them 
back, carry them back," said the magistrate, " and let 
them convert all the scolds in town." 

Wesley's Journal describes with graphic simplicity 
the scenes of his itinerant preaching. " At Gwenap, 
in the county of Cornwall," he says, " I stood upon the 
wall in the calm, still evening, with the setting sun 
behind me, and almost an innumerable multitude be- 
fore, behind, and on either hand. Many likewise sat 
on the little hills, at some distance from the bulk of 
the congregation. But they could all distinctly hear, 
while I read, ' The disciple is not above his master,' 
and the rest of those comfortable words, which are 
day by day fulfilled in our ears." To this spot he fre- 
quently came, and in his old age he says of it: — "I 
think this is one of the most magnificent spectacles to 
be seen this side of heaven. And no music is to be 
heard on earth comparable to the sound of many 
thousand voices, when they are all harmoniously 
joined together, singing praises to God and the Lamb." 

At another time he speaks of preaching so near the 
sea in a high wind, as to make him fear that he could 
not be heard, yet " God gave me so clear and strong a 
voice," says he, " that I believe scarce one word was 
lost." Again he preached m a church-yard by the 
ruins of a cathedral, and a great congregation from 
the lead-mines knelt down in the grass among the 
tomb-stones. This scene might well have shaken the 
ashes ^^beneath the sod, and brought out the ghosts 
of the old monks and devotees who had once worship- 



334 JOHN WESLEY. 

ped at that decayed altar, and carried blessings to the 
neighboring poor. Again, at Gawksham he preached 
on the side of an enormous mountain, and "the con- 
gregation," he says, " stood and sat row above row in 
the sylvan theatre." Once he had the ground mea- 
sured, and found that he had been distinctly heard at 
the distance of a hundred and forty yards. At the age 
of seventy, he preached in the open air to thirty thou- 
sand persons. 

His labors were incredible alike in their amount and 
their character. Preacher, theologian, ruler, he w^as 
constantly at work. Every year he travelled many 
thousand miles, and even in his travels never slackened 
his studies. On horseback he was at his book, andat 
the stopping-places was ready with pen and voice. 
Twenty years before his death, an edition of his works 
in thirty-two volumes was ^published, embracing trea- 
tises upon a great variety of subjects. Religion was of 
course the absorbing theme, but history, natural phi- 
losophy, grammar, and even medicine, came in for their 
share of his time and pen. He was the father of the 
system of cheap books for the people. He was willing 
alike to compose and to compile whatever would instruct 
and elevate the many. Thus he exerted vast influ- 
ence. From the sale of his books he derived the chief 
means for his great charities. To his honor be it 
spoken, the amount ascertained to have been given 
away by him exceeds a hundred thousand dollars. 
Consistently enough he might preach that close and 
judicious sermon on " Money as a Talent," under the 
three heads, — Gain all you can ; Save all you can ; 
Give all you can." Many go with the preacher in the 



HIS OLD AGE. 335 

first two heads, who would be much staggered by the 
third. 

There is no sight more refreshing and instructive 
than a cheerful, active old man. Let us look in upon 
Wesley in his hale old age. 

The excellent Alexander Knox, met him a few 
years before his death, and declared that every hour 
spent in his company afforded him fresh reason for 
esteem and veneration. " So fine an old man I never 
saw. The happiness of his mind beamed forth in his 
countenance ; every look showed how fully he enjoyed 

' The gay remembrance of a life well spent.' 

In him old age appeared delightful, like an evening 
without a cloud." 

It would not have been difficult to identify that old 
man anywhere, whether in London or any of the cities 
of his sojourn, or in his travels. Few, however, would 
have judged him to be w^hat he was, from his external 
appearance merely. Little of the daring innovator 
was there in his mien. In some distant part of Eng- 
land, you might have seen a man pursuing his journey 
resolutely on horseback, and showing by the book in 
his hand that he grudged to lose a single moment of 
time. You might see the same man walking with 
firm step through some town or village, giving proof in 
every motion that he had a work to do. His stature 
was under middle size, his habit of body thin, but com- 
pact. A clear, smooth forehead, an aquiline nose, an 
eye of piercing brightness, a complexion of perfect 
healthfulness, distinguished him among .all others. 



336 JOHN WESLEY. | 

Even his dress was characteristic, — the perfection of 
neatness and simplicity, perhaps with a Uttle touch of 
primness ; a narrow, plaited stock, a coat with a small 
upright collar, — his clothes without any of the usual 
ornaments of silk or velvet, — combined with a head 
white as snow to give the idea of a man of peculiar 
primitive character. 

One book he always carries with him in his jour- 
neys besides the Bible. It is his Diary. Would we 
learn what view of life the old man takes, we can seem 
to look'over his shoulder on his eighty-sixth birthday, 
and read what he has written. June 28, 1788, he 
writes : — 

"I this day enter on my eighty-sixth year. And 
what cause have I to praise God, as for a thousand 
spiritual blessings, so for a thousand bodily blessings 
also ! How little have I suffered yet from the rush of 
numerous years." 

After mentioning a few marks of the infirmity of 
age, he declares that he feels no such thing as weari- 
ness either in travelling or preaching. 

" And I am not conscious of any decay in writing 
sermons, which I do as readily, and I believe as cor- 
rectly, as ever. 

" To what cause can I impute this, that I am as I 
am ? First, doubtless, to the power of God fitting me 
for the work to which I am called, as long as he 
pleases to continue me therein ; and next, subordi- 
nately to this, to the prayers of his children. 

"May we not impute it, as inferior means, — 1. To 
my constant exercise and change of air? 2. To my 
never having lost a night's sleep, sick or well, at land 



HIS DEATH. 337 

or at sea, since I was bom ? 3. To my having sleep 
at command, so that, whenever I feel myself almost 
worn out, I call it, and it comes, day or night? 4. To 
my having constantly, for about sixty years, risen at 
four in the morning ? 5. To m)^ constant preaching 
at five in the morning for above fifty years ? 6. To 
my having had so little pain in my life, and so little 
sorrow or anxious care ? 

"Even now, though I find pain daily in my eye, or 
temple, or arm, yet it is never violent, and seldom lasts 
many minutes at a time. Whether or not, this is sent 
(0 give me warning that I am shortly to quit this 
tabernacle, I do not know : but be it one way or the 
other, I have only to say, — 

' My remnant of days 

I spend to his praise. 
Who died the whole world to redeem ; 

Bo they many or few, 

My days are his due, 
And they all are devoted to him?' " 

So it proved three years afterwards. In 1791, 
March 2d, at the age of eighty-eight, he breathed his 
last, with a hymn of praise on his hps. With the Ht- 
tle strength remaining, he cried out to the friends 
watching his departure, — " The best of all is, God is 
with us ;" and could only whisper the first two words 
of a favorite psalm,— "I'll praise, I'll praise." His 
friends were left to finish the hues, for Wesley's voice 
was to be heard no more. 

He died, but a work remained such as no other 
man of his century left behind him. At the time of 
15 



338 JOHN WESLEY. 

his death, more than a hundred thousand persons 
looked to him as their guide to heaven, and now the 
hundred thousand has become a milUon. 

Whence this vast power? We reply, from the age, 
the man, and the method. 

The age was cold and skeptical. The common 
people were neglected by those who should have been 
their teachers. A tongue of fire was needed none the 
less for the philosophy and scholarship that distin-M 
guished the eighteenth century. The metaphysics 
and ethics of sages like Berkeley and Butler, the 
learning of scholars like Lardner and Warburton, 
were little successful in awakening faith ; nor were 
the well written and sensible sermons of Seeker and 
Sherlock, Paley and Blair, very powerful in rebuking 
sin, even in the select class of their admirers. Fire 
was wanted, and it came. 

It cfme in a peculiar man, and a pecuhar method. 
The man was a combination of elements usually 
deemed incompatible. We cannot accord to him any 
remarkable depth of intellect. To philosophical in- 
sight or metaphysical faculty he laid small claim. 
Neither was poetic genius one of his gifts ; nor any 
remarkable power of fancy or imagination. George 
Fox, his forerunner in practical reform, notwithstand- 
ing his narrower compass of gifts and attainments, 
strikes us as having a deeper mind ; and original 
thoughts once in a while shine out from his rhapsodic 
medleys, that startle the reader more than anything 
m the great Methodist's pages. But as uniting prac- 
tical judgment and efficiency with burning enthusiasm, 
Wesley is unequalled, certainly on this side of the age 



THE MAN. 339 

of St. Ignatius. His head was as clear and utilitarian 
as Franklin's, — without the least particle of raysticism 
or extravagance ; whilst his heart flamed with a zeal 
like Loyola's, and glow^ed with a charity like Fene- 
lon's. At once an acute reasoner and an enthusias- 
tic devotee, he carried out his thoughts and emotions 
with a determination of purpose worthy of being men- 
tioned with the mightiest, — even with that mighty will 
already preparing, at the close of Wesley's life, to show 
itself in France in the young officer from Corsica. 

It cost him little to say that least and hardest of 
words, — that countersign to the gate of virtue,^" No." 
He could readily resist the entreaties of father and 
brother. He was proof against the irritations of the 
fireside, and swerved not a jot from his course to pro- 
pitiate the peculiar companion, who, it w^as more than 
whispered, enabled him to sympathize with Job the 
patriarch, and Socrates the sage. He carried out his 
plans without regard to opposition on the part of 
others, or to the sacrifice of his ow^n time or ease. 
As an instance of disposition, he coolly ascertained, 
by experiment, how much sleep would do for him, and 
the result became the rule of his subsequent life. Not 
a few of our readers, doubtless, from remembrance of 
many vain attempts to form the habit of early rising, 
will be ready to say that the man who could do this 
need not fear difficulty in any quarter. 

Wesley's sharp mind and determined will remind 
us often of old WicklifFe, although that father of the 
Reformation distanced him far as an independent 
Protestant and Scripturalist. Wesley was a rigid 
disciphnarian, and came near being a sad formaUst. 



340 JOHN WESLEY, 

That he was tyrannical, we see no proof. His great 
power came to him from the necessity of his position. 
We cannot say that the sectarian sceptre was as 
disagreeable to him as it would have been to many 
of his contemporaries, although we can name none 
who would have borne it with greater mildness and 
self-denial. Benevolent, just, persevering, courageous, 
indomitable, he stands, beyond question, first in 
achievement among the Christian men of his century. 
Such was the man. From the man came the 
method. It was part and parcel of himself, — the 
method of doctrine and of discipline. The doctrine 
came from his clear head and religious experience, in 
connection with his study of the Bible in itself and its 
interpreters. His creed pointed to immediate effect. 
The Christian life, according to him, begins at once 
in repentance and faith. Thus the need of imme- 
diate salvation must be urged, and men exhorted to 
lay hold of acceptance at once. Thus begun, the 
Christian life continues in peaceful assurance progress- 
ively to perfect love. Religion being thus progressive, 
and man being gifted with abihty to advance or 
retreat, hence the need of a system of instruction and 
discipline that shall have constant watch over the 
converts. Accordingly, if the readiness with which 
present salvation through faith was offered to the 
listening thousands savored too much of enthusiasm, 
the fear of their abuse of the doctrine ceased the 
moment the ably adjusted mode of discipline ap- 
peared, by which the convert was led on, by patient 
steps, from his new raptures to maturer knowledge 
and more sober piety. 



HIS METHOD. 341 

The force with which Wesley insisted upon the 
doctrine of free-agency, in opposition to Calvinism, — 
his statement, that every man can lay hold of sal- 
vation for himself, and afterwards lose his hold by 
negligence, — gave him great power in appealing to 
men to repent and believe, and strive to continue in 
well-doing when once upon the right ground. The 
cheerful, affectionate temper of his faith, the hope and 
love expressed in the hymns and general devotions of 
ihe Methodist worship, gave the cause of which he 
was the leader great popularity in an age of heavy 
formalism. He owed much to his brother Charles, 
his constant helper, — less resolute than himself, in- 
deed, in action, and sometimes weary of innovation, 
but far his superior in poetical gifts. To Charles 
Wesley Christendom owes a lasting monument, as 
one of her most gifted psalmists, uniting, as he does, 
the great excellences of a writer of hymns, — fervor, 
point, simplicity, and dignity. 

Measured by the classic standards, Wesley was by 
no means a great preacher. His sermons show little 
genius, but great coherence, good sense, practical 
knowledge and force. Some of them are very re- 
markable for worldly wisdom in connection with 
Christian aim. All of them show the same single 
purpose, — to win men to Christ, and keep them there. 
They are, by universal consent, greatly superior to 
Whitefield's ; yet they do not, in the printed form, 
exhibit sufficient power to enable us to understand 
their singular effect. The power was in the man. 
The spirit that was in him struck fire from the sim- 
plest words. 



342 JOHN WESLEY. 

' As a theologian, he was learned, kicid, and for- 
cible, although by no means the first in this de- 
partment in his denomination. The superiority of 
Fletcher, in point of depth, is, we beUeve, generally 
admitted. If — as he himself would have deemed it 
no slander to call him — he were the Montanus of the 
movement, determined and fervent, like that bold 
Phrygian, Fletcher was the TertulHan, mightier with 
the pen, and the master in theological wisdom. 

As a disciplinarian, he was very strict; yet he im- 
posed upon otliers fewer burdens, by far, than he 
assumed himself. A stickler for due subordination, 
he abhorred slavery, and cried out against it at a 
time when it was an heroic thing so to do. Partial 
to Episcopacy, he detested its too frequent formalism, 
regarded bishops, not as a distinct order by them- 
selves, but simply as superintending presbyters, and 
had no faith in the doctrine of the Apostolic suc- 
cession as held by Churchmen. His method of dis- 
cipline, reaching, as it did, from the small bands of 
a few persons up to the General Conference, was 
characteristic of himself. He was a paragon of sys- 
tematic order. When, a boy at school, he ran every 
morning thrice round the garden for exercise, he 
showed a trait that marked his whole life. His day 
was divided with a precision that is amazing. He 
would not yield a jot from his plans, even to keep 
friendship with Whitefield, or to enjoy the society of 
Dr. Johnson. He thus, by his rigid method, accom- 
plished a vast amount of work, and lived ten lives in 
one. As he ruled himself, so he legislated for others. 
The Methodist system illustrates the man, and an 



HIS CHARACTER. 343 

acquaintance with its workings is the best key to his 
character. Many of its features we must regard as 
too dictatorial for our Protestant freedom, and far 
from being an improvement even upon the hierarchy 
which it displaced. But under his administration 
it appears to have been admirably adjusted and bal- 
anced. We cannot but say, — Honor to the man who 
in himself exalted so rigid a method with so earnest 
a soul, and combined in his policy such elements of 
order and freedom, control and aspiration ! 

Faults he doubtless had. Who has them not? He 
may have been too set and notional, a little imperious, 
somewhat credulous and superstitious. Some of his 
opinions were whimsieaL He believed in ghosts and 
evil possession. He recognized the future existence 
of brute beasts. He trusted important actions to lot, 
and ascribed peculiar authority to the passages of the 
Bible upon which he might chance to open. But he 
should be judged by the rule of his life, not by the 
exception. Surely, what he calls true religion or 
catholic love was the inspiration of his life. Of the 
convulsions, shrieks, trances, groans, and shouts of his 
converts we make small account, as he comparatively 
did at last. The deepest groanings of the spirit are 
those " that cannot be uttered." It is for the warmth 
of his Christian love, and the hearts without number 
inflamed by him with the like sentiment, that we 
honor him. To us his name is fragrant among the 
saints and fathers of modern Christendom. With 
some of our readers, at least, his name will be greeted 
more cordially from the fact, that he did not regard 
the gate of heaven as closed against the pious believer 



344 



JOHN WESLEY, 



in a creed not Trinitarian, and recognized a Unita^ 
rian, like Firmin, as a genuine Christian. 

What is to be the destiny of the religious order 
formed by him we do not undertake to predict. The 
symptoms of return to the Establishment among some 
of the more wealthy and cultivated Methodists of 
England, and the dissensions upon reform topics in 
the denomination in this country, present omens not 
very encouraging to the champions of the Wesleyan 
hierarchy. We apprehend, moreover, that the pro- 
gress of Christian liberty, in its best sense, will not be 
favorable to the permanence of the rigid discipline and 
despotic polity with which the successors of Wesley 
have continued to burden their churches, under cir- 
cumstances so different from those existing in the 
days of their founder. Time is a severe commentator 
upon every religious reform. Enthusiasm is apt to 
end in license or tyranny. To which issue Methodism 
is more likely to tend, grave history must ere long 
record. That record^ whatever it may be, will leave 
no stain upon the memory of Wesley. If Whitehead 
gives the true view of the rise of Methodism, Wesley's 
better genius would be as much honored by the pjeva- 
lence of a more independent spirit, as by the continued 
©r increasing consolidation of the order. 

Wesley's death took place, as we have seen, March 
2d, 1791. England httle appreciated the man whom 
she had lost. The Estabhshed Church, of which he 
continued a minister to the last, and in the bosom of 
which until shortly before his decease he had desired 
his people to remain simply as a religious society, 
gave him little benediction, shutting against him the 



HIS INFLUENCE. 345 

pulpits that were open to clerical Nimrods and Bac- 
chanals. 

Look from Wesley's death-bed towards France ; 
and on the morrow the streets of Paris exhibited a 
scene that should have proved to the conservatives of 
England the worth of him who could impress upon 
the neglected masses the sentiment of religion. The 
sacred vessels of the Parisian churches were carried to 
the mint to be coined into that which is called the 
" sinew of war." England followed not France in 
the desecration. A sentiment of reverence guarded, 
and still guards, her altars. The tombs of her saints 
and sages were not to be violated as were those of 
France, nor their ashes to be scattered to the winds, 
that the lead of their coffins might be moulded into 
bullets. Hearts, by thousands, once rude and violent, 
were now at peace with God, living in recognition of 
a heavenl}^ kingdom, and chanting holy hymns in- 
stead of shouting fiendish curses. Myriads once 
crushed beneath poverty and toil had been rescued, 
and, with the faith and love of the Gospel, every good 
gift had been given. America, too, had shared the 
blessing ; her remote borders had been visited by the 
missionaries of Methodism, and her forests had rung 
with their thriUing hymns. 

The founder of the great society rested not in St. 
Paul's nor Westminster Abbey. The ruling powers 
did not desire it, although they did not deny such 
consecrated ground to a profligate man of genius, or a 
blasphemous soldier. Nor did Wesley desire to be 
buried away from his people. His remains were laid 
beneath the chapel in which he had so often preached. 
15* 



346 JOHN WESLEY. 

Rest in peace, soul of John Wesley ! we are ail 
ready to say. May the English race, in all its 
branches, bless that name. As for us, we take leave 
of his memory now by applying to him his own tribute 
to Whitefield in the^ermon upon his death, in 1770: — 

" Who is a man of a catholic spirit ? One who 
loves as friends, as brethren in the Lord, as joint par- 
takers of the present kingdom of heaven and fellow- 
heirs of his eternal kingdom, all, of whatever opinion, 
mode of worship, or congregation, who believe in the 
Lord Jesus ; who love God and man ; who, rejoicing 
to please and fearing to offend God, are careful to 
abstain from evil and zealous of good works. He is a 
man of a truly catholic spirit who bears all these con- 
tinually upon his heart ; who, having an unspeakable 
tenderness for their persons, and an earnest desire for 
their welfare, does not cease to commend them to God 
in prayer, as well as to plead their cause before men ; 
who speaks comfortably to them, and labors by all his 
words to strengthen their hands in God. He assists 
them to the uttermost of liis power in things temporal 
and spiritual. He is ready to spend and be spent for 
them ; yea, to lay down his life for them. How 
amiable a character is this ! How desirable to every 
child of God !" 

This portrait came from the painter's own soul. It 
might have been extravagant praise to bestow on 
George Whitefield. It is no more than truth, when 
applied to John Wesley. 

Thoughts many and important are suggested by 
the survey that we have hastened through. This 
thought is most obvious, and is all that can be added : — 



11 



THE LESSON. 347 

What an idea the history of Wesley and his work 
gives of the capacity of an individual, and of the pro- 
ductiveness of a single life ! It is a great question, in 
.our day, How may the largest crop be derived from 
an acre of ground ? Far greater the question, How 
much efficient power can a life produce? Wesley's 
story is a stern homily on persevering, devoted, cheer- 
ful labor. " Work ! work ! " it cries, trumpet-tongued. 
" Work on, work ever, in faith and love ! " 

His method we know ; what is ours 7 Let every 
conscience answer. 

1847. 



XIII. 

JONATHAN EDWARDS AND THE 
NEW CALVINISM.* 



We took occasion in our last article to treat as 
fully as we could of the father of Methodism, and of 
the revolution wrought by him in the religion of 
England. We now turn homeward, to speak of a 
contemporary of Wesley, of equal influence in his 
own sphere, and of far higher rank in the kingdom 
of ideas. It was, as we have seen, in the month of 
roses, 1703, that the rectory of Ep worth heard a new 
voice, and John Wesley first saw the light. That 
same year, and, as more fitting, in the month of the 
sere and yellow leaf, the more grave and pensive Oc- 
tober, the Puritan parsonage of East Windsor, Con- 
necticut, that already — frequent blessing of the cleri- 

y* 1. The Works of Jonathan Edivards, A.M. With an Essay on 
his Genius and Writings, by Henry Rogers ; and a Memoir, by 
Sereno E. Dwight. London. 1839. 2 vols. 

2. Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in Netv England. 
A Treatise, in Five Parts. With a Preface. By Charles Chauncy, 
D.D,, Pastor of the First Church of Christ in Boston. Boston. 
1743. 



NEW ENGLAND. 349 

cal home — heard the prattle of four little girls, re- 
joiced for the first time in a son. This son became 
-the most noted theologian of his country. |The 
metaphysician of Calvinism, he has been as much 
the father of a method of thought, as the Arminian 
disciplinarian has been of a method of action. 

To understand the career of the great Oalvinist 
and his associates and antagonists, we must glance at 
the condition of New England at the opening of. the 
last century. The state of religion here then resembled 
much its state in the mother country when Wesley 
came upon the stage. The fire of the old contest be- 
tween Puritan and Churchman had been dying out. 
By the Revolution of 1688 new principles of tolera- 
tion w^ere incorporated into the British policy, which 
showed themselves in the old country by softening 
the former animosity between the Dissenters and the 
Establishment, and w^hich changed the face of things 
here, by taking from the Puritan Church its control 
over the State, and bringing forward a somewhat lib- 
eral party in the ranks of Congregationalism. The 
weight of the liberal party was proved by the founda- 
tion of Brattle Street church, in Boston, in 1698, and, 
nine years afterward, by the election of one of its found- 
ers, John Leverett, to the presidency of Harvard Col- 
lege, in spite of the violent opposition of the Mathers. 
In this movement, a spirit came to light which had 
long covertly existed, and which without doubt had 
some representatives in the cabins of the Mayflower 
and Arbella. Thus, at the very beginning of the 
last century, Harvard College showed something of 
the hberal tendency that has since stamped its history ; 



350 * JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

and the rise of Yale College at that time, under the 
auspices of the more riged class, and with some feel- 
ing of opposition to Harvard, gave intimation of those 
conflicts of opinion that have agitated New England 
to the present day. We do not say that there was 
any thing of the doctrinal antagonism that has since 
been so conspicuous. The Liberalism of that day 
was rather a spirit than a doctrine, — a spirit of resist- 
ance to ecclesiastical despotism, and of regard for the 
right of private judgment and congregational inde- 
pendence. 

It was obviously an important crisis in affairs, — a 
season of decay as well as renovation. Much indif- 
ference prevailed among Christian people. Men were 
not very wilhng to accept theology, as before, upon 
the basis of Puritan authority. The claims of reli- 
gion must be examined, its doctrines proved, and, 
while the leading divines of Europe were striving to 
defend Christianity from assault, and legitimate its 
claims by reason and scholarship, the mind of New 
England in a measure felt the same want, and de- 
manded strong thinkers to meet the craving for more 
light. When thus called for, men always come. 
Strong thinkers appeared. Verily, there were giants 
in those days. 

Harvard and Yale sent each its strong man, each 
man to be captain of a host. 

In the year 1720, the order of performance at the 
New Haven Commencement bore upon its list of 
graduates the name of Jonathan Edwards. Few, if 
any, of the goodly company at that ancient Com- 
mencement, as they listened to the oration of that 



YALE AND HARVARD. 351 

youth of seventeen, had any very clear intimation of 
his destiny. The fathers and mothers, the youths and 
maidens, looked upon him, doubtless, with interest, as 
the first scholar in his class ; the elders of the church 
hoped well of him,[as they noted his serious spirit, and 
remembered the stanch faith of his father, the venera- 
ble minister of East Windsor. His classmates might 
have thought him a little stiff and reserved, even for 
those days, but could not help respecting the youth 
who had distanced them all in scholaship, and who 
at fourteen, had read Locke with more pleasure than 
" the miser finds in handfuls of silver and gold from 
some newly-discovered treasure." 

One year afterwards, the town of Boston and its 
vicinity sent forth its wisdom and beauty and strength 
to the village of Cambridge, and among the class of 
thirty-seven members at that Commencement, none 
was regarded with more honor than Charles Chauncy, 
a youth not yet seventeen, who bore a distinguished 
part in the services of the day. 

These youths became the religious leaders of their 
time. Edwards and Chauncy are the representative 
men of New England theology in the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Of them we are to treat, — of Edwards prin- 
cipall}^, and Chauncy incidentally. They represent 
tendencies that have always existed in Christendom. 
In their own time, and under the New England garb, 
they illustrate diversities of creed and temper, that 
have ever shown themselves in the world, from the 
days of TertulUan and Origen, Augustine and Pela- 
gius, to those of Calvin and Arminius, Chalmers and 
Channing. 



352 JONATHRN EDWARDS. 

Did our limits permit, we might find instruction in 
portraying the chief scenes in Edward's course of pre- 
paration for this great work. We inight dwell upon 
his infancy and boyhood in the parsonage of East Yf ind- 
sor, — trace his career through College, and describe 
the years during which he was fitting himself for the 
ministry, which were passed partly in theological 
studies and partly in the duties of a tutorship at New 
Haven. But, having to deal with a man who lived 
and ruled in the region of ideas, we may well spare 
sketches of scenes and events, and speak of the chief 
elements which during his preparatory period com- 
bined to make him what he became. 

The first element which determined his destiny un- 
doubtedly was the creed in which he was educated, 
especially the characteristic feature of that creed, — 
the sovereignty of God, and his acknowledged right, 
purely of his own will and without respect to human 
desert, to elect to heaven or doom to hell the souls of 
men. This doctrine he heard preached by his father 
even from his boyhood. As a boy he thought it a hor- 
rible belief, and struggled against it earnestly, as he 
himself declares. But afterwards he found himself 
convinced of its truth, and, as he says, without ever 
being able to give any satisfactory account of the 
means or manner of the conviction. 

The second element consisted in his strong religious 
sensibility, which showed itself from early childhood, 
alike in the fervor and frequency of private prayer, 
and in the httle meetings which he with a few other 
boys conducted, in a rude booth built by them in a re- 
tired spot, which to this day is pointed out as hallow- 



I 



EARLY TENDENCIES. 353 

ed ground. Thus his expanding heart opened to the 
religious influences around him, and lie stands, with 
Pascal and Leighton, amongst those who have ac- 
cepted the dogma of elective sovereignty without that 
desperate struggle with early lusts that Jed Augustine, 
Luther, and Bunyan to disparage human will. 

The third element which we notice was his singular, 
perhaps unsurpassed, power of abstraction, his passion 
for meditating upon the causes of things, and his 
faculty of tracing causes to consequences by deductive 
processes of adamantine strength. We shall speak of 
this tendency more at large when we come to treat of 
his works. 

These elements had all exhibited themselves as 
early, at least, as his nineteenth year. When at this 
age he went to preach at New York, and delighted to 
roam along the beautiful banks of the Hudson, as he 
assures us he often did, for contemplation on Divine 
things, and for secret converse with God, he undoubt- 
edly employed in the "sweet hours" there all the 
resources of his nature, education, and experience. 
He had learned to see the sovereign God in all things ; 
in his views of nature and religion, he had manifested 
the sensibility of the poet, as well as the fervor of the 
devotee. His searching mind had already investi- 
gated the foundations of faith and knowledge, and 
struggled at once for a science of matter and spirit, 
creation and the Creator. He says that for some time 
previously his mind had been almost perpetually in 
the contemplation of Divine things. "I spent most of 
my time in thinking of Divine things from year to 
year, often walking alone in the woods and solitary 



354 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

places for meditation, soliloquy, and prayer, and con- 
verse with God ; and it was always my manner to 
sing forth my contemplation. I was almost constant- 
ly in ejaculatory prayer, wherever I was." 

Again, speaking of his stay at New York, he says, 
that holiness " made the soul like a field or garden of 
God, with all manner of pleasant flowers ; enjoying a 
sweet calm, and the gently vivifying beams of the sun. 
Tlie soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my medi- 
tations, appeared like such a little white flower as we 
see in the spring of the year ; low and humble on the 
ground, opening its bosom to receive the beams of the 
sun's glory, rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture ; 
diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peace- 
fully and lovingly in the midst of other flowers round 
about, all in like manner opening their beams to the 
sun." 

What is to become of this enraptured wanderer on 
the banks of the Hudson, so absorbed in visions of 
God and contemplations of creation ? Is he to be poet, 
dreamer, theorist, recluse, — what? In this world of 
stern reality is there any work for him to do, or is he 
to go through life by himself, more wondered at than 
admired, and giving friends and observers cause for 
querying whether he had not been sent to the wrong 
planet, or stumbled upon the wrong age ? The fact 
must be our reply. 

Go to the beautiful town of Northampton, Massa- 
chusetts, and the question is at once solved. Let the 
date be any year between 1727 and 1750. We select 
the winter of 1735. The Connecticut is bridged over 
with ice ; Holyoke and its twin mount are covered 



NORTHAMPTON IN 1755- 355 

with snow. The Sabbath bell rings out solemnly, yet 
cheerfully, upon the clear air of the winter morning. 
The village church, cold, and no marvel of architectu- 
ral proportion, soon becomes the centre of concourse. 
In Puritan decorum, in sleighs, on horseback, on foot, 
the villagers wend their way through the snow, and 
take their seats in the square, high-backed pews. The 
minister, a man of thirty-two, attended by a lady seven 
years younger than himself, in whose face rare beauty 
is blended with a singularly spiritual expression, walks 
up the aisle, and, after opening for his companion the 
door of the paster's pew, ascends the pulpit. After 
prayer and hymn, he stands up to preach. His ap- 
pearance does not at first promise much. He is tall 
and thin, without any grace of manner, attraction of 
person, compass or music of voice. He holds his 
manuscript in his hand, and reads it through without 
a single gesture or movement of the head. But mark 
the power which he exercises as he goes on. There is 
no startling change in his address, but as thought after 
thought is presented with such iron strength and such 
piercing point, every breath is hushed ; tears and every 
mark of contrition pervade the assembly. The text is 
from Romans iii. 19 : — " That every mouth may be 
stopped.'' The subject is '- The Justice of God in the 
Damnation of Sinners." — The sermon is terrific. After 
its two points of introduction, and five of doctrine, 
comes the application, with its more than twenty points, 
down upon the devoted heads of the hearers, like forked 
lightnings from a single cloud. All classes feel its 
force. The hard man of business begins to think of 
his ways, to loathe his own worldhness, and apprehend 



356 



JONATHAN EDWARDS. 



with horror his destiny. The gayest daughter in the 
parish, flaunting in all the allowable pride of that aus- 
tere time, repents of her vanity, sees little to admire in 
her attire, and yearns for the pearl that is of too great 
price to be bought. A great awakening follows, and 
the year 1735 makes a date in the theological calendar 
of New England. 

Edwards, for he is the preacher, had then been in 
Northampton eight years, having been settled there the 
year of Chauncy's settlement in Boston, 1727. The 
fame of his labors went out into all the churches in 
the land, and the fire kindled by him reached many 
neighboring places, and similar scenes appeared. 
Northampton soon became a classic spot. — a very 
Mecca or Jerusalem to the pilgrims of Puritanism. 
Still, its fame was not yet complete. 

In the autumn of 1740, the noted Whitefield, the 
early friend and helper of Wesley, first came to New 
England. Landing at Newport, he visited Boston? 
and preached in the principal churches of the town. 
Soon after, in the month of October, he started for the 
scene of the revival of 1735. When he and Edwards 
went into that Puritan pulpit together, it required no 
great depth of perception to recognize a singular con- 
trast in the two men. They were as different in mind 
and manner as in looks. The thought-worn theolo- 
gian, and the briUiant, imposing declaimer, — the one 
dealing in chains of argument that no logician could 
break asunder, the other abounding in pathetic exhor- 
tations, high wrought figures, melting cadences, which 
no logician could resist, and which, whilst they had 
made a Garrick marvel, moved Edwards to weep. No 



WHITEPIELD. 357 

wonder that he wept, and the whole congregation were 
refreshed by Whitefield's visit. It must have been a 
great relief to them to listen to his eloquent appeals to 
the heart, after having their minds so constantly on 
the stretch in attempting to follow the profound deduc- 
tions of their own minister, penetrating the deeps of 
the soul and the Godhead from Sabbath to Sabbath. 
Edwards, however, much as he felt the pathos of 
Whitefield's preaching, saw his dangers, and advised 
him to beware of trusting so much to mere emotion, 
and of presuming to judge so unhesitatingly of the piety 
of other persons, — advice which Whitefield took more 
in word than deed, else he might have shunned the 
rock on which he split, escaped the name of an un- 
charitable censor, and the suspicion of confounding the 
pulpit with the stage. After this friendly lecture, he 
never seems to have liked Edwards very well ; at least, 
was never very studious of his company. 

Rekindled by Whitefield's visits, the awakening in 
New England, which had for some years subsided, 
re-appeared, and 1740 makes the date of centennial 
commemoration among our Orthodox Congregation- 
alists, as it does also among the followers of Wesley. 
Arminianism in England and Calvinism here had 
their Pentecost at the same time. We are ready to 
believe that not a Httle of the true fire came down 
from heaven in both cases. 

But Edwards, however superior to Wesley as a 
metaphysician, was far inferior to him as a pastoral 
guide, and knew not, like the great Methodist, how 
to tend the fire already kindled. As his opinions 
were consolidated into a system, he wielded them 



358 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

with increased force, and seemed to speak to men as 
an ambassador from the other world. His famous 
Sermon on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" 
is a good specimen of his peculiar power. No one 
who reads it can wonder at its singular effect. He 
delivered it at Enfield, Conn., in 1741, at a time 
when the congregation there were expecting to hear 
a foreign preacher. They were disappointed in this 
expectation, and not at all propitiated by seeing the 
unpromising substitute for the stranger, as he entered 
the pulpit and began the service in his usual mono- 
tonous way. But soon the feehng changed, and the 
eyes that had been lowered in displeasure or shut in 
indifference began to gaze upon the preacher with 
intense interest. Ere long, some of the audience rose 
to their feet, and in the end the whole congregation 
stood up, as if drawn toward the orator by some ter- 
rible fascination. The house of worship became a 
scene of fearful commotion, — such being the distress 
and weeping, that he was obliged to desire silence, 
that he might be heard. The sermon is enough to 
make a man of our milder creed shudder. No won- 
der that it so affected that audience of so austere doc- 
trine. After a close and pointed statement of doctrine 
in ten points, he urges its application in a manner of 
which this is a fair specimen : — 

"There is nothing between you and hell but the 
air ; it is only the pov/er and mere pleasure of God 
that holds you up. Your wickedness makes you 
heavy as lead, and to tend downwards w^ith great 
weight and pressure towards hell ; and if God should 
let you|go, you would immediately sink and descend 



HIS PREACHING. 359 

into the bottomless gulf; and your healthy constitu- 
tion, and your own care and prudence and best con- 
trivance, and all your righteousness, would have no 
more influence to uphold you and keep you out of 
hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling 

rock The bow of God's wrath is bent, and 

the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends 
the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it 
is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of 
an angry God, without any promise or obligation at 
all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being 

drunk with your blood The God that holds 

you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider 
or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, 
and is dreadfully provoked ; his wrath towards you 
burns like fire ; he looks upon you as worthy of no- 
thing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer 
eyes than to bear to have you in his sight ; you are 
ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than 
the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours." — 
Works, Yol. II., pp. 7 et seq. 

On another occasion, as he was preaching in the 
pulpit of a brother minister, this brother is said to 
have forgotten himself so far, as to pull the preacher 
by the coat, and to stop the terrific sermon by the 
question, — "Mr. Edwards, Mr. Edwards ! Is not God 
a merciful being ? is he not merciful ?" 

To keep the state of feehng at the pitch to which 
such a style of preaching carried it was hardly in 
man's power, nor could it be safely moderated into its 
permanent level without the most judicious superin- 
tendence. Here Edwards failed. He had, indeed, 



360 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

too deep a mind to regard nervous excitement or vehe- 
ment emotion as proof of religion. His chief danger 
came from want of sympathy with the common feel- 
ings of men, and knowledge of the means of perma- 
nent influence over them. In 1744, he sorely offended 
the young people of his parish, and, through them, 
many of their parents, by well-meant but unwise 
attempts to suppress some objectionable practices ; 
and five years afterwards he lost the gpod graces of 
most of the parish by that measure, so noted and so 
consistent, the proposition to reestablish the old Puri- 
tan rule, for a long time abandoned under the minis- 
try of Stoddard, of requiring from each candidate for 
the communion, not merely a profession of faith and 
evidence of good personal character, but also such 
testimonials of rehgious experience as should satisfy 
the committee of the church that conversion had 
taken place, and evidence been given of a regenerate 
heart. He would thus, of course, regard the Lord's 
Supper, not, as it has been regarded by the great 
mass of Christians, as a means of grace, so much as 
a seal of salvation. Trouble was the consequence, 
and separation the final result. Customs that are 
connected with hallowed associations, and founded in 
feelings so justifiable as those which moved Stoddard 
to enlarge the door of communion, could not easily 
be set aside by argument, however close and weighty. 
We are not to suppose that the cruel obstacle was by 
any means on the side of the worldly, who sought 
the Lord's table without due seriousness. There is a 
sentiment of delicacy and dignity in a large number 
of truly spiritually-minded persons that leads them to 



AT STOCKBRIDGE. 361 

shrink fiom exposing their secret thoughts, much 
more from submitting their spiritual experience to 
the judgment of a church committee. 

Now is the time for Edwards to prove his true char- 
acter. In great affliction, feeble health, and stinted 
fortune, he chose to state an unpopular doctrine, but 
one connected with his whole system. Is he willing 
to abide the consequences ? He is wilUng. He left 
his cherished home in the loveliest town of New Eng- 
land, and accepted a call to perform missionary duty 
among the Indians of the vicinity. What a position 
was his at Stockbridge for the strongest reasoner, if 
not the deepest thinker, in the land ! A theologian 
great as Calvin, a logician not inferior to Spinoza, thus 
become the minister to savages, whose comprehension 
of sacred truth hardly equalled that of children ! He 
turned trial into triumph. His genius towered up as 
never before among the mountains of Berkshire. In 
this his comparative seclusion, he devoted himself to 
study and meditation. Works such as those on " The 
Freedom of the Will," '' The End of Creation," "The 
Nature of Yirtue," Original Sin," — works that have 
given him his name as the third of a trio of which 
Augustine and Calvin form the first and second, — 
were there composed, — there, amid that grand scenery, 
where, in a spirit alike pure, but with a creed so dif- 
ferent, for the last time Channing Ufted up his voice 
for human freedom. 

Seven years thus spent brought him to a new era 

in his hfe. Called to the presidency of the College at 

Princeton, he was regarded as on the eve of new 

achievements in a more auspicious career. But no, 

61 



362 JONATHAN EDWARDS, 

That mighty intellect, which had long encroached 
upon the feeble body, was to encroach upon it no more. 
A few weeks after his entrance upon his academic 
duties, he died. After he had been given up as senseless 
and speechless, he surprised his mourning attendants by 
saying distinctly, — " Trust in God, and ye need not 
fear,'^ — thus true in death to that sentiment which had 
marked his whole hfe. A few months afterwards his 
wife followed him, and was interred by his side. Fit 
woman was this Sarah Pierrepont to be his com- 
panion in life and death. Her piety was as lofty as 
his, and far more beautiful, — the vine clinging, indeed^ 
confidingly to the rock, yet so much more lovely, and 
sometimes stretching its branches and rich clusters 
above the highest crag. She blended the most pains- 
taking prudence with the most devoted and even 
rapturous piety. Her heart was sometimes so wrought 
upon by contemplation of Divine grace, that her very 
frame felt the movement, and, to use a comparison 
which we have met in some old author, in Leighton, 
we believe, her whole being seemed drawn tremulous- 
ly towards the Saviour, as the magnet points with 
trembling yearning towards the polar star. Not Tere- 
sa nor Madame Guyon, in the rapture of their mystical 
marriage with Christ, ever flamed with a more sacred 
or absorbing passion. She had confessed to her hus- 
band that a " glow of Divine love seemed to come 
down from the heart of Christ in heaven into her 
heart like a stream or pencil of sweet light." In death 
they were not divided. As we think of them, it seems 
as if Numidia had sent hither the soul of her august 
bishop, and Spain the spirit of her sainted devotee, bis 



HIS THEOLOGY. 36^ 

spiritual child, though the interval was a thousand 
years ; and Augustine and Teresa had re-appeared, 
not, indeed, under a tropical sun, nor in monastic se- 
clusion or ascetic enthusiasm, but in the stern clime of 
our North, and with the subdued temperament and 
under the hallowed union of a true New England 
home. 

^When Edwards died, his fame was by no means at 
its height. The theological world was in commotion, 
and it was not clear what estimate would be set upon 
his principles and writings. Chauncy, May hew, and 
a host of able men, virtually, if not at first nominally, 
Arminians, were in the field. He little knew what 
strong intellects, such as Bellamy and Hopkins, had 
been raised up under his own instructions, nor could 
he have anticipated that his own son and namesake, 
then a lad of thirteen, would be his equal in logical 
force, and his superior in range of learning. Nor had 
he the second-sight to see that among his grandsons 
were to be men as noted as President Dwight, and as 
notorious as Aaron Burr. The great events then at 
hand may have been vaguely anticipated. The sha- 
dows, however, which they cast before them, could but 
poorly reveal their form and significance. A revolu- 
tion in theology, as well as in government, was at 
hand in New England. 

Now that the revolution has come, we look back 
to study the influence of this great Calvinist upon 
religion and theology. His position may be stated in 
few words. The Calvinistic creed had begun to lose 
ground among the people of New England, when he 
came to its rescue, and sought to defend and enlarge 



364 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

its leading dogmas by the mingled aid of Scripture 
and mental analysis. In his conclusions he differs 
not widely from Calvin, but very widely in his method 
of explaining and defending those conclusions. Cal- 
vin, the French refugee of Geneva, had the acute 
mind appropriate to the legal profession in which he 
was trained. Edwards possessed the higher power of 
the metaphysician, and, by subtile distinction and 
elaborate deductions, sought to justify to human rea- 
son doctrines which Calvin thinks to deduce from 
Scriptural precedent, and is not unwilling to state in 
all their intrinsic repulsiveness. We can but glance 
at the main points of Edward's system, and of the 
antagonist system of the Arminians. 

His starting principle was, that God is sovereign, 
and acts according to his own supreme will and ar- 
bitrary pleasure, without being bound by any obliga- 
tion or any foresight of faith or merit. Whom he will, 
he elects to heaven. Whom he will, he dooms to 
hell. His great motive, and the end of creation, is to 
declare his own glory by the emanation of his own 
infinite fulness, "including the manifestation of his 
internal glory to created understandings, the commu- 
nication of the infinite fulness of God to the creature, 
the creature's high esteem of God, love to him, and 
complacence and joy in him ; and the proper exercises 
and expressions of these." The school in which 
Chauncy and Mayhew flourished, the one more as the 
learned theologian, the other more as the philoso- 
phical moralist, without denying or disparaging 
the sovereignty of God, attached most emphasis to his 
benevolence, and urged the benignity of his attributes- 



HIS DOCTRINES. 365 

rather than the supremacy of his power as the key to his 
government, and the ground of his deaHng with men. 

Edwards regarded men as by nature totally de- 
praved, or fatally tainted with original sin, — not, in- 
deed, under condemnation merely on account of 
Adam's sin, but as sharing in his fallen nature, heirs 
of his wickedness and of its consequences, even as 
the branches of a tree derive their character and lot 
from the parent stock. He asserted the freedom of 
the soul in one respect, and denied it in another* 
Man, according to him, is free to act as he pleases, 
but by no means free to please to act, except according 
to the nature of his depraved will or affections. He 
has natural ability, but not moral ability. No exter- 
nal power prevents his doing right. He cannot, sim- 
ply because he will not, and cannot w^ill ; just as a 
drunkard in extreme sottishness is said to be unable 
to reform, not because any outward force is brought 
to bear upon him, but because his appetite is so strong 
that he will not give up the cursed thing. Chauncy 
and his companions were also willing to assert the 
depravity of man, but denied that it went so far as 
to destroy his moral power, or prevent his laying hold 
of the means of recovery. He, with the Arminian 
divines, contended for freedom of will in the sense of 
power over its volition, — power to modify the volitions, 
not merely to act them out. 

One more branch of doctrine needs to be mentioned. 
From the views of Edwards regarding God and man, 
it is obvious what his doctrine of salvation must be. 
Cxod being sovereign, and man being totally corrupt, 
and doomed by nature to eternal woe, only sovereign 



366 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

elective grace can save him. He can be saved only 
by the Divine decree, which accepts the sacrifice of 
Christ as virtually in place of the sinner's penalty, 
and communicates to him such spiritual power as 
awakens or creates a new principle of love in his 
soul, and thus places him among the redeemed. The 
strong mind of Edwards was saved from the absurd- i 
ity of maintaining that Christ's sufferings are a vica- ■ 
rious payment of man's debts to the Divine justice, 
and of thus nullifying mercy by representing justice 
as fully satisfied, and the whole account between 
man and his Maker as squared. He deemed the 
sacrifice of Christ necessary, in order that man might 
be forgiven without disparagement to the Divine 
government. Chauncy and his school attributed far 
more power to man in the work, and described the 
influence of Christ's mission and sacrifice as brought 
near enough to every man by the Gospel to redeem 
all souls who will strive to lay hold of the proffered 
blessings. They preferred, however, to forego theoriz- 
ing upon the nature of the atonement, and rest in the 
simple facts and statements of Scripture. 

There are several minuter shades of doctrine by 
which Mr. Edwards explained his views, and mo- 
dified the prevailing dogmatic Calvinism; but upon 
these we cannot dwell. Nor can we enlarge upon 
the principles already stated as at issue between him 
and his antagonists. The feelings and convictions 
of most persons for whom we write are so decided, aS 
to make the statement of these points equivalent to a 
determination of their merits. Our criticism of Ed- 
wards's system must be confined to a few leading 



DEDUCTIVE POWER. 36T 

traits, which at once illustrate the man and his prin- 
ciples. 

First, we observe that he, like all prominent Cal- 
vinists, was more of a deductive than an inductive 
thinker ; more able and apt to deduce remote con- 
sequences from given principles, than to arrive at 
principles by a broad induction of facts. It is gene- 
rally presumptuous to deny the correctness of his 
reasoning from his premises or starting-points. But 
consider well his premises, and at once grave mis- 
givings arise, if not of their individual correctness, at 
least of their collective completeness. This faculty of 
intellect makes him almost invincible as an antago- 
nist, especially in the attack ; for when his opponents 
state their own premises or definitions, since, upon all 
moral topics, definitions are generally insufficient or 
incomplete, they are entirely at his mercy. With his 
unsurpassed power of deduction, he traces each state- 
ment to its consequences, and each little rivulet of 
inadvertence or error swells into an Atlantic of folly 
or absurdity. As we read his assault upon the Ar- 
minian position, and see how ably he reduces some 
of its statements to absurdity, we cannot but imagine 
how his own position would appear, if assaulted with 
the like force, — what Pantheism might be deduced 
from his doctrine of Divine sovereignty, what Fatal- 
ism lurks in his views of free-will, and to what utter 
Universalism his theory of God's elective grace and 
the supreme excellence of love must lead. Let him 
turn his own powerful magnifier against himself, as 
he turned it against Taylor, TurnbuU, and Williams, 
and motes enough would appear magnified into moun- 



368 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

tains. We cannot regard Edwards as by any means 
the master-mind in the broad survey of man, nature^ 
and rehgion, that he was in tracing out favorite prin- 
ciples to uUimate results. In his way, and exaUed 
as his aim was, he had, after all, much of the char- 
acter of a special pleader. 

A sad deficiency, surely, this was in one who 
undertook to describe and analyze the various and 
subtile parts of human consciousness, and to solve the 
enigmas that involve the relation of man to God» 
This is a second point of criticism upon Edwards and 
his school. How vastly difTerent was the method of 
Him whom God sent to be our Teacher as well as 
Saviour! What profound yet tender recognition of 
all the facts of our nature, what simple yet sublime 
statements of the providence and attributes of God! 
We read the treatises on the Freedom of the Will, 
and on the Affections, with wonder, and not a little 
of admiration. But what relief we feel in turning to 
the words of Christ, listening to the story of the Pro- 
digal Son. to learn by beautiful similitude w^hat the 
sinner can do to find peace, and what the Father 
will do to grant pardon, — then to the parable of the 
Good Samaritan, to know what the affections are 
that please God and open heaven. Read what the 
austere Puritan says of God's hatred to the im- 
penitent, — that he holds them over the pit of hell as 
one holds a loathsome insect, and that they are more 
abominable in his sight than the most loathsome 
serpent is in ours, — then turn to the Sermon on the 
Mount, and the contrast is striking enough. In these 
impressions we are not left to the limits of Liberal 



EMOTIONS. 369 

Christians for sympathy. We might quote, from the 
able pens of New Haven or Andover, animadversions 
quite as strong as are uttered among ourselves upon 
the great Puritan's severity. 

We go on to say, that, mighty as this logician was 
in his deductions of consequences, he was in his 
premises often under the control of his emotions, and 
thus left to carry out logically trains of reasoning that 
started not in reason. His fundamental doctrine of 
election, that vexed topic that seems to have originated 
in Paul's account of God's dealing with the Jews and 
Gentiles as nations, he imbibed, without being able to 
say how, whether from devout feeling or early asso- 
ciation ; and his theory of original sin rests on an as- 
sumption in reference to the first chapters of Genesis, 
and, to take the view most favorable to him, was at 
least quite as much the result of his prostrate humility 
as the conclusion of his commanding intellect. Under 
the metaphysician and theologian lay the master ele- 
ments of the poet and devotee. He mingled in him- 
self qualities not often in such union. In his com- 
position he seems to have had the heart of Bunyan, 
with the head of Spinoza. His mind was like the 
granite peak of a great volcano, its solid mass resting 
upon hidden fires that forced it up to its dizzy height, 
and still through its hard and adamantine walls 
poured its flames heavenward, lending glory to the 
skies, and casting blackness and ashes upon the earth. 
There was much of the poetical element in his nature, 
and, as has been said, if we remember rightly, the 
world lost a poet in gaining a metaphysician. But his 
poetic sense, instead of dealing in playful fancies or 
16* 



370 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

building gorgeous castles, instead of a tendency to- 
wards such spiritual creations as the Faery Q.ueen or 
Paradise Lost, revealed itself in tlie graphic illustra- 
tions, the intense objectivity, in which his ideas are 
presented. His fancies and feelings were engrossed 
by his vast doctrinal system, and were taken up by 
these abstract formulas, even as the electric fluid darts 
from its cloud and runs upon iron bars. His system 
aimed to bridge over the interval between heaven and 
earth, God and man. To his imagination, if we may 
change the figure, along its adamantine steps came 
down the seven-fold lightnings of the judgment-seat, 
and again benignant angels ascended and descended 
upon their ministries of love. 

His emotions were all religious. Shrinking from 
society, he lived chiefly as before God. Theocrat in 
heart, his system was, after all, the creature of his in- 
tellect, working at the bidding of his emotions. It 
is not difficult to imagine him, under the influence of 
other associations, giving his mind to the defence of 
far other doctrines. Educated in Italy, and in the 
noontide of the Papal despotism, with priestly influ- 
ences flowing down upon him from gorgeous churches 
and learned schools, he might have rivalled Aquinas, 
become the Seraphic Doctor of Romish scholasticism, 
and have done for the creed of Hildebrand what he 
did for that of Calvin. Or, placed in the circum- 
stances of Richard Hooker, we can fancy him inflamed 
with something of that gifted man's inspiration, and 
defending the polity of the Elizabethan prelacy, as he 
did that of the Puritan theocracy. 

In head and heart Edwards was a thorough-going 



BOSSUET. 371 

metaphysical theocrat, using the iron sceptre of his 
logic in connection with the pages of revelation, as the 
Papal theocrat wields the iron sceptre of authority 
through the decrees of councils and the pageantry of 
rituals. He had the air of a vicegerent of God. His 
children always rose when he entered the room. So 
much a matter of course was his superiority over the 
other members of the family, that the silver bowl be- 
fore him did not appear in any invidious contrast with 
the baser ware of the remainder of the table. How 
unhke the rough and benevolent Chauncy, whose 
children were frequently locked with him into the 
study to keep them out of the way, whilst he, good 
man, undisturbed by their noise, plunged into the 
folios of the Fathers to find arguments against Episco- 
pacy, or was meditating upon the love of God in crea- 
tion and redemption, bent upon proving the ultimate 
triumph of Divine mercy. Yet, with all his spectral 
majesty, Edwards was a most humble soul, and deem- 
ed himself the lowly instrument of Divine Providence. 
Unlike such men as Cotton Mather, he identified the 
cause of God with his own interests, not his own in- 
terests with the cause of God, and was saved from the 
scandal of always regarding his own opponents as of 
necessity the opponents of heaven. 

Edwards was a theocrat of the dogmas as the 
Catholic priest is a theocrat of the ritual. Compare 
him with Bossuet As the Archbishop of Meaux 
sought to revive the waning power of the priestly 
hierarchy, so Edwards would do with the dechning 
authority of the theocracy of doctrine. Bossuet stood 
forth, in all the magnificence of his pontifical robes 



372 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

and the splendor of the Papal ritual, to defend, by his 
rare learning, logic, and eloquence, the power of the 
priestly succession to grant or refuse the sacraments 
of salvation. This is ritual theocracy. In Puritan 
simplicity, with the Bible in hand, and no aids but his 
own commanding intellect and the spirit of God, the 
minister of Northampton stood up to plead for the 
Divine authority of his system of doctrine, made sal- 
vation accessible only through the medium of dog- 
matic truth, and, by right of the truth he professed to 
wield, dealt out joy and woe as under the commission 
of high Heaven itself. Such is the theocracy of the 
dogma. Who that knows any thing of Puritan 
greatness can doubt the force of such an appeal? 
Basing succession upon truth, not truth upon succes- 
sion, it speaks in God's name, and alike on battle-fields, 
on the stormy seas, and amid the famines, pestilences, 
and earthquakes of early times, its cry has been, — "If 
God be for us, who can be against us ?" With philoso- 
phy to back it, and without philosophy, this doctrine 
has acted with tremendous pov/er upon men. Ed- 
wards surveyed the whole field of history from his 
dogmatic point of view. He wrote his History of Re- 
demption as Bossuet wrote his Essay upon Universal 
History. Where one sees the traces of the imperish- 
able hierarchy, the other sees the traces of the imper 
ishable doctrine. It is no small privilege to look upon 
the broad chart of history through the eyes of these 
two master spirits, these eagles of Meaux and Nor- 
tham.pton. If the Frenchman has the more pohshed 
style, artistic arrangement, and statesmanlike grasp, 
the New-Englander is not less acute, comprehensive, 



CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS. 



373 



and forcible. We should be sorry, however, to read 
history through no other eyes than theirs. Yet 
neither was the slave of system. The independent 
spirit that moved the one to be the champion of the 
liberties of the GaUican Church against Ultramontane 
usurpations is worthy of being named with the intre- 
pidity with which the other took his stand in defence 
of Congregational freedom. 

We must hasten now towards the conclusion, 
although it be at the sacrifice of a most interesting 
branch of the subject, — the relation of Edwards to the 
leading philosophers, especially the Christian philoso- 
phers, of his age. The eighteenth century w^as pecu- 
liarly a philosophical age. ^While the exile from 
Northampton was pursuing his exalted studies in the 
wilds of Stockbridge, other minds of similar tendencies, 
in quarters little familiar to him, were engaged in the 
same noble work, and striving to confirm Christian 
faith by the light of reason and philosophy. What an 
august conclave could have been assembled of sages 
living at the same time ! For a moment suppose them 
brought together. From the see of Cloyne, in Ireland, 
let Berkeley come, honored, indeed, with the mitre, yet 
as humble-minded as when in his Rhode Island seclu- 
sion, more experienced in the world, but not the less a 
spiritualist from tiie knowledge of its grossness ; from 
the Episcopal palace in Durham, let Butler, master of 
the science of analogy, sage in the knowledge of man's 
moral nature, wisest of English moralists, come ; from 
his home in Bath, let Hartley come, pattern of a Chris- 
tian physician, and precursor of the host of men who 
have sought to illustrate the mind by the body and to 



374 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

confirm Christianity by arguments drawn from both ; 
from his retired nook at Konigsburg, Prussia, let Kant 
come, investigator of the laws of pure reason ; and 
with hiim at respectful distance, the skeptic Hume, 
whose system he sought to demolish, and for his dreary 
doubt to substitute a deep philosophic faith ; let Swe- 
den, too, send her sage, her mystic seer, for there is 
room for Emanuel Swedenborg in that assembly. 
When all have met together, let the Puritan divine 
and metaphysician enter. We will not discuss the 
true order of precedence, nor say what place belongs 
to him. Little honor will we claim for him as a 
master of style, if good style consists in the choice of 
the most classic words, and the framing of the most 
harmonious periods. In style he falls as far below 
Berkeley as he rises above Butler. But surely this 
august assembly would present no spirit purer, no in- 
tellect stronger, than his. To Edwards belongs a 
chief place among metaphysicians of the eighteenth 
century, a high place among the intellects of our race. 
As we have been wont to believe, the highest honor 
among the teachers of our race belongs to those who 
have taught men to acknowledge spiritual realities, 
and moved them to live as subjects of a Divine king- 
dom. The view which Edwards took of the natural 
depravity of the human heart, and its innate incapacity 
for spiritual life, shall not prevent our regarding him 
as one oi the great spiritualists of the Church. De- 
voutly he believed in the Divine light, and was the 
means of its shining in many souls. It is the baser, 
and more frequent error to doubt or deny its existence, 



CHAUNCY. 375 

than to mourn as he did over the original sin that had 
extinguished its flame. 

Let us look now upon our New England, and con- 
sider the changes that have taken place since his day. 
He still lives in his works, and his opinions, however 
much modified in the creed of his avowed followers, 
are still consulted with reverence, and by not a few re- 
garded as authoritative. Princeton and East Windsor 
may be alone ready to bind themselves to his authority^ 
yet Andover and New Haven rejoice to honor his name 
and laud his theological services, whilst Cambridge 
has no word of disparagement for his character. New 
England owes him gratitude, if not for the details of 
his system, surely for the elevation of his aims, and the 
school of intellectual discipline in which so many 
strong minds have been trained. Chauncy survived 
him twenty years, and saw changes which his sterner 
compeer was not permitted to witness. Chauncy lived 
to pronounce the funeral sermon of the noble Mayhew, 
and to see the consugimation of the result for which 
Mayhew had so fondly hoped, — our country indepen- 
dent of the sceptre and crosier of England. He lived 
to see innovations considerably in advance of his own 
avowed position. In his day, the Trinitarian clauses 
were stricken from the liturgy of King's Chapel, which 
he once feared would combine or exhibit the sway of 
the crown and the mitre. He lived to see his warn- 
ings against fanaticism heeded, and the sober men of 
the straitest sect adopting his views respecting the 
marks of true religion and church prosperity. As he 
grew old, devotion more and more absorbed him, and 
subdued a heart more prone by nature to strength than 



376 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 

to tenderness of feeling. With doctrines hopeful and 
benevolent, that despaired of no n)an's final salvation, 
he rivalled in the fervor of his piety the austere man 
whose name he had rarely mentioned in controversy 
but whose tendencies he had been called upon to op- 
pose, content with exhibiting the excesses of White., 
field, Tennent, and Davenport, without presuming to 
say how much of their extravagance had its counte- 
nance in the revivalist of Northampton. Both these 
fathers of our churches trusted in the living God, and 
owned with prostrate devotion his glory in Christ. 

They have been the spiritual fathers of a mighty 
host, and by affinity with one or the other the ten- 
dencies of subsequent times may be designated. Their 
names stand fitly at the head of the Christian Inde- 
pendents, the Congregationalists of New England, 
and, in fact, of our whole country. We are not 
amongst those who are ashamed of the history of Con- 
gregationalism. The Congregationalists of New Eng- 
land, both Orthodox and Libei^l, have given to our 
country its noblest intellectual, moral, and religious 
treasures. They have taken the lead in all laudable 
enterprise. The useful arts, literature, theology, mis- 
sions, education, moral reform, practical religion, have 
found their chief champions among them. 
, It is a solemn thing to review the lives of our illus- 
trious fathers. In all their diversities of doctrine and 
temperament, how they trusted in God, the living 
God ! How steadfastly they looked to the great First 
Cause through all second causes ! How is it now, in 
this age of the apotheosis of nature, the adoration, 



THREE AGES. 377 

almost, of science, the industrial arts, and the gold to 
which they are made so mightily to minister? 
i- We are men of the third century of New England. 
Let us not forget the lesson of the first and second 
centuries. Think of the first age. Call up the image 
of the Pilgrim band. We may almost hear the At- 
lantic waves beating against the rock-bound coast, 
and see the weary ship appear with its Heaven-guided 
company, and catch the sound of their mighty anthem, 
'Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name 
give glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's sake.' 
The worthies of the second age appear, and, with their 
more advanced civilization, thought, and liberality, 
speak the same sentiment through men as diverse as 
the rigid Edwards and the more hopeful Chaunc}^ 
Let the men of the third age give the response. Let 
not the cares of the world, nor the delusions of partial 
science, nor the w^orship of second causes, nor the 
decencies of external morality, nor even the excite- 
ments of social reform, lead us to forget to worship the 
God of our fathers, and crave the grace proffered 
through his Son. Whilst so many causes give the 
mind a horizontal turn, and in this hne so many of 
our interests lead, let us not slight the beacon fingers 
that point upward to God and eternity. Edwards 
may help to teach us this lesson the more, if we can 
look upward through a more cheering creed than was 
his. 

1848. 



XIV. 

JOHN HOWARD AND PRISON 
REFORM. 



This world of ours presents great varieties of 
scenery, but far greater varieties in human life. The. 
icy north differs not more from the torrid tropics, the 
mountain from the mine, the meadow from the ravine, 
the lake from the cataract, night from day, than the 
lot of man differs from that of man, the palace from 
the hovel, the votaries of pleasure and the victims of 
want, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the bond and 
the free. The sun, as daily he casts his mighty glance 
over the world, sees many things which even his own 
blessed rays cannot make bright. If he paints pic- 
tures for himself as of late he has done for us, he must 
have a gallery of portraits that reveal strangely the 
dark scenes and deeds of human history. His rays 
have, since society began, fallen upon few sights 
more dismal than the abode of the captive, the pris- 
oner, whether of war or persecution, whether the con- 
victed felon, the wretched slave or the oppressed patriot 
and martyr. 



HTS YOUTH. 379 

The criminal has generally been treated as if he 
had no claim upon humanity. The unfortunate for 
whom compassion could not but have some tender- 
ness, if his misery were seen, has too often been for- 
gotten, whilst large numbers of captives for whom the 
question of guilt or innocence has not been decided, 
have been suffered to languish in dungeons, as if sus- 
picion must needs imply guilt. If all the truth were 
told, what a history would that of the dungeon be ! 
What other inscription would fitl}^ belong to it than 
that written by the poet over the entrance to his im- 
agined Hell ? — " Hope that cometh to all, cometh not 
here." 

But he who said, 'I am the light of the world,' came 
to shed brightness even upon this dark place. We 
now consider the man who, more than any other, 
labored to carry out the Master's benignant spirit in 
this direction, a man who in the depths of his soul 
looked to God through Christ, and proved his faith by 
his works. This man, whose name is a proverb, let 
us strive to understand in his life and spirit, labors 
and successes. 

In what quarter are we to look for the great philan- 
thropist of the eighteenth century ? Go back a hun- 
dred years and suppose the question to be asked, who 
of the young men of that time was to win a statue in 
St. Paul's cathedral as a tribute to his philanthropic 
services. None would have sought for him in a grocer's 
shop, or looked for him in that pale-faced boy behind 
Mr. Newnham's counter in London. Yet such was 
John Howard in his youth. The son of a wealthy 
upholsterer, he was apprenticed to a wholesale grocer 



380 JOHN HOWARD. 

at the usual age. Although the business was not to 
his taste, and on his father's death he purchased what 
remained of his time, he undoubtedly derived much 
advantage from the rigid discipline of his apprentice- 
ship, especially much of the accuracy in details which 
enabled him to give such clear statements of the con- 
dition of the suffering and point out the efficient reme- 
dy. It was years before his hour came and he found 
his true mission. Yie can but glance at two or 
three points in his life previous to his celebrated ca- 
reer. 

In the year 1752 or 1753 visit the village of New- 
ington near London, and you find that the pale ap- 
prentice has become a man of fortune, and though 
still in feeble health, he devotes himself to scientific 
pursuits and charitable deeds. He is now twenty-five 
years of age and married. The neighbors think him 
a little pecuHar, not only from his unfailing benevo- 
lence to the poor, but from the pertinacity with which 
he insisted upon making the excellent person who had 
attended him in sickness, his wife, notwithstanding 
great disparity of years. He takes decided ground as 
a religious man, and without being at all dogmatic, is 
an interested member of the Dissenting Church in the 
place. He himself started and headed a subscription 
for purchasing a house for the minister of the congre- 
gation, a measure which of course we commend to 
general adoption. Such was Howard at Newington, 
a kind hearted man of wealth and leisure, of whom 
few persons out of the little village much knew or 
cared. 

Glance at him otice more a few years after. Look 



AT FORTY-THREE. 381 

into a filthy dungeon in Brest, the naval port of France. 
There upon the damp floor of the prison, with only a 
little straw to protect them, lie a considerable company 
of Englishmen, sailors and passengers of a merchant 
vessel bound to Lisbon and captured by a French 
privateer. For forty hours they are left without food, 
and then but a miserable piece of mutton is thrown to 
them without plate or knife to hold or divide it. 
Among them there is a somewhat feeble looking man 
of twenty-nine years. It is Howard. He is tasting 
the lot of the captive in all its bitterness and uncon- 
sciously preparing himself for his holy mission. Left 
a widower, with health impaired and mind given 
somewhat to melancholy, he looked to travel for relief, 
and was led by his interest in the suffering to visit the 
scene of the recent fearful earthquake at Lisbon. His 
imprisonment was not of long duration, though long 
enough to give him much knowledge and impulse. 

Pass on and take one more view of him at a more 
advanced period. Glance at his position in 1770 at 
the sober age of forty-three. His home is at his favor- 
ite place Cardington upon the farm bequeathed him 
by his father. Fourteen years of various experience 
have passed, years in part of happiness with a con- 
genial companion, years in part of sad bereavement. 
He had travelled frequently in England and on the 
European continent, and during the year of which we 
speak had made a continental tour. His mind was of 
the most serious frame, and the beautiful bay of Na- 
ples to his soul rather reflected the glory of God than 
the efleminate beauty of Italian life. In Naples he 
made a solemn dedication of himself to God, and 



382 JOHN HOWARD. 

without asking the priest to witness or the church to 
consecrate the act, put his name to a covenant be- 
tween himself and the most High. In this spirit he 
returned to Cardington. His mode of life for three 
years from our date, was retired, yet earnest and 
active. He was a good neighbor, a kind landlord, a 
faitliful Christian. He visited the poor, advised them 
for their best welfare, and when needful relieved their 
wants. In one point he anticipated an excellent 
movement which has of late made great progress in 
England and begun to show itself in this country. 
The owner of a large property, he considered the poor 
not as offering him plunder but as claiming his pro- 
tection. He did not, as many have done, put up 
miserable hovels fertile in rheumatism and fever, and 
rent them at enormous prices, but erected on his 
grounds neat and healthy cottages, and leased them on 
very moderate terms to persons who would use them 
well. He walked three miles to church both forenoon 
and afternoon, unwilling to keep his servants from 
equal privilege on that day. When the congregation 
was divided on account of the minister turning Bap- 
tist, and Howard and others separated and formed a 
new congregation, he lived on the most friendly terms 
with the old parish, and instead of trying to make 
trouble urged peace, and continued his subscription 
towards the support of his former minister and the 
charities of the Baptist church. With his ow^n minis- 
ter Thomas Smith he lived in the most intimate 
friendship. Yet notwithstanding all these things the 
world knew little of John Howard. His hour had not 



HIS CAREER BEGUN. 383 

come. Even at the sober age of forty-six his great 
and immortal work was before him. 

The immediate occasion of directing his attention 
to the cause so identified with his name was his ap- 
pointment to the post of high-sheriff for the county of 
Bedford. This office, although honorable and respon- 
sible, was one usually undertaken by some affluent and 
prominent man who took to himself all the dignity of 
the station, and left its labors to some subordinate. 
Howard was not the man to content himself with 
grand pageants and banquets to which the high- 
sheriff was usually called. Scrupulously faithful to 
his duties, he took an early opportunity to inspect the 
gaol of his county. He saw at once that a state of 
things existed there that called out his warmest indig- 
nation and protest. He was struck first of all by the 
outrageous custom of retaining men in prison after 
their acquittal, for the payment of fees charged them 
for the time spent in confinement previous to their 
trial. Anxious to abate this abuse, he investigated 
the condition of other gaols in the hope of finding 
more humane precedents, and thus his career as the 
prisoner's friend begun. This was in the year 1773. 

The revelations of oppression and misery that con- 
stantly presented themselves to him in his tour through 
England astonished himself as they did the whole 
English public. The disease, vice and injustice that 
were connected with the prevalent system, he carefully 
investigated and boldly exposed. The attention of the 
English Parliament was at once drawn to the subject, 
Howard was examined before the House of Commons, 
and a bill was passed abolishing the obnoxious gaol 



384 JOHN HOWARD. 

fees aad providing for the better health of the pris- 
oners. 

What to some men would have been hailed as a 
triumph sufficient to crown a hfe with honor was to 
him but the beginning of his work. He aimed as it 
were to take the whole census of human misery, and 
after two tours of observation through England and 
Wales, and two visits of examination to the continent, 
he published his first grand treatise on prisons in the 
year 1777. We may regard the publication of this 
work as closing the first period of his philanthropic 
career. I cannot review or even classify the forms of 
misery that he met with in the prisons of Europe, In 
Holland he found some ray of hght, but almost every- 
where else the darkness was unbroken, and punish- 
ment seemed to have no reference to the reformation 
of the offender. One incident is worthy of mention in 
his first visit to France for its high historic interest. 
At Paris he tried to obtain admittance into the Bastile, 
and actually passed within the outer gate. But an 
officer came out of the guard-house with such a look 
of astonishment and threatening that the philanthro- 
pist made his way back as quickly as possible. What 
thoughts are suggested by this fact — Howard and the 
Bastile ! — the spirit of humanity endeavoring to enter 
the dungeon of feudal despotism ! Humanity is re- 
pulsed, and despotism triumphs within its moats and 
battlements ; the captives in the iron cages were not 
then to hear the voice of a friend. How different the 
meeting some ten years afterwards at those gates. 
Not gentle humanity but terrific revenge stands face 
to face with feudal despotism, and the Parisian mob 



SECOND TOUR. 385 

razed the stronghold of tyranny to the ground. May 
humanity not plead thus in vain with the remnants of 
feudal oppression that still curse the earth. May the 
gentle dews of mercy avert another baptism of blood. 

With an industry as devoted as his philanthropy 
Howard superintended the publication of his researches. 
Exact in particulars, but by no means ready at com- 
position, with vast pains he arranged for the press the 
results of his three years' investigations and more 
than ten thousand miles' travel. He took lodgings 
close to the printing office, and rose at three or four 
during a severe winter that he might faithfully correct 
the proof sheets. It was a quarto volume of over five 
hundred pages that he now dedicated to the House of 
Commons, and put at a price so low that charity was 
as much stamped upon its sale as upon its contents. 
There is no important idea in the great subject of 
prison discipline that is not to be found expressed or 
implied in this book. 

This task over, a new period of labor opened upon 
him. In this second stage of his public career, begin- 
ning with the year 1778 and ending 1785, he twice 
made the tour of Great Britain and thrice visited the 
continent for the inspection of prisons, acted as com- 
missioner of the English Parliament for the erection 
of a penitentiary, published the result of his researches 
in an Appendix to his great work, and sent forth a 
revised edition of the whole. New abominations were 
constantly brought to light. The secrets of the torture- 
chamber were revealed, and it was discovered that the 
eighteenth century with all its boasted light and hu- 
manity tolerated atrocities of which the darkest age 
17 



386 JOHN HOWARD. 

of the world might well be ashamed. At the close of 
seven years of renewed labor, we find Howard once 
more at Cardington, and might well presume that 
after such exposui;es and sacrifices, being as he was, 
upon the verge of sixty years of age, he would now 
spend the remainder of his days in a dignified yet 
benevolent retirement. But his absorbing love would 
not let him rest. Where suffering called, he could 
not but follow. A new stage of his career opened. 

He had plunged into the dark cell of the prisoner, 
he had exposed the great evils of prison discipline, 
and had urged upon Christendom the duty of min- 
gling reformation with punishment in the treatment 
of the criminal. Another great evil of humanity now 
rises before him. He had for years confronted the 
gaol-fever in the prisons of England. He now re- 
solved to face the most terrific of human ills, the 
plague. Forth he goes on his heroic expedition, to 
the lazarettos or plague hospitals of Europe. He in- 
sisted on going entirely alone, unwilling that his 
accustomed and devoted attendant should share the 
perils of the terrible excursion. His examination of 
the lazarettos extended beyond the limits of Christen- 
dom, and the Mohammedans of Smyrna and Constan- 
tinople were astonished at this Christian, who blended 
such daring and tenderness in his visits of mercy to 
the scenes of infection. Through all he kept his faith 
and courage. A cheerful heart was of great power, 
alike in giving strength and withstanding disease. In 
a letter to a friend at this time, he deprecates the idea 
of having undertaken a wild or chimerical enterprise, 
although fully aware of the extent of his exposure, . . 



LAST JOURNEY, 387 

^' But I persevere," he says, " through good report and 
evil report. I know I run the greatest risk of my life. 
Permit me to declare the sense of my mind in the ex 
pressive words of Dr. Doddridge, — 'I have no hope in 
what I have been or done.' Yet there is a hope set 
before me. In him, the Lord Jesus Christ I trust. In 
him I have strong consolation." 

Returning home in 1787, he was sincerely troubled 
to find an effort in progress to erect a statue in token 
of his services, and stopping this enterprise by his ear- 
nest entreaties, he gave himself now to the task of 
embodying his new researches in a quarto volume on 
Lazarettos. 

Surely now his labors are at a close, we cannot but 
say. Over sixty years of age, with infirm health, and 
with a son a constant source of solicitude to him, he 
certainly must give himself to repose, and pass his few 
remaining years in comparative leisure. But his book 
on Lazarettos gave indications of another journey like 
the last. Look over his journal kept at this time, and 
we may understand his state of mind. We find pas- 
sages like these bearing the date of Sunday evening, 
March 15, 1789. 

" An approving conscience adds pleasure to every 
act of piety, benevolence and self-denial. It inspires 
serenity and brightens every gloomy hour, disarming 
adversity, disease and death. It is my ambition to 
put on the Lord Jesus Christ and have the same mind 
that was also in him. 

" Health, time, powers of mind and worldly posses- 
sions are from God. Do I consecrate them all to him, 
so help me, O, my God, 



388' JOHN HOWARD. 

" Our superfluities should be given up for the con- 
venience of others — our convenience should give place 
10 the necessities of others — and even our necessities 
give way to the extremities of the poor." 

Such were this man's Sunday evening thoughts at 
his home in Cardington the last year of his life. These 
thoughts were forthwith translated into actions. Once 
more and with a presentiment of approaching death, 
he went forth to study the nature of the plague in its 
most fearful haunCs in Russia, Turkey, and the East- 
It is sad to say farewell even for a few months to any- 
thing that we love. There was great beauty and 
pathos in Howard's farewell to England, his home and 
friends — a farewell for ever. He made his will and all 
necessary arrangements as to his property ; he even 
gave directions for his tomb-stone, and forbade any 
epitaph except the simple inscription of his name, age, 
death and the words " My hope is in Christ." He 
visited the poor in his neighborhood, passed the even- 
ing before his departure in the grove planted by him- 
self and the deceased friend most dear to him, and on 
the morrow he was on his way in search of the pesti- 
lence that walketh in darkness. 

Visiting all the chief prisons and hospitals on the 
way, he went through Germany to St. Petersburg and 
thence to the borders of the Black Sea to Cherson, 
where war and disease had accumulated their horrors. 
Whilst the Russian army were revelling in festivity 
for their victory over the Turks, the philanthropist was 
pursuing his holy vocation at the bedsides of the sick 
and dying. His hour came as it must come to all. 
Called to visit a young woman sick of malignant fever, 



HIS CHARACTER. 3S9 

and thus obliged to ride a long distance in the cold 
and wet on horseback, he was no longer proof against 
infection, thus enforced by fatigue and storm. Calmly, 
even cheerfully he watched death as it came stealing 
over him. He gave directions for his funeral to the 
friend who attended him, and forbade that any mon- 
ument or inscription should mark the spot of his burial ; 
" but lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over 
my grave, and let me be forgotten." 

Forgotten he could not be. War and winter did 
not prevent Russia from honoring his obsequies with 
the pageantry that he had deprecated. And when 
England heard the news of his death, it was com- 
memorated as a public calamity, and ere long the 
statue of Howard stood in St. Paul's cathedral. 

So passed from the world the man by eminence 
called the philanthropist. In this age, which has so 
far accepted and carried out his ideas, we owe him 
the tribute of faithful appreciation — especially the kind 
of appreciation he most earnestly sought, a due sense 
of the greatness of the cause to which he devoted him- 
self Yet although he shrank from eulogy, we may 
not properly pass over his personal character. 

Of a mind so single and earnest, it demands little 
time or philosophy to treat sufficiently. His faith was 
in Christ, and his faith worked by love. Religious 
humanity was the centre of his life, the source of his 
power. His intellectual gifts were far from being bril- 
liant, his education was far from being highly priv- 
ileged. Strong common sense and accurate observa- 
tion and statement were his chief talents. But in 
respect to force of will he yields to few if any of his 
17 



390 JOHN HOWARD. 

race. Rarely indeed has such humanity been united 
with such firmness, such gentleness with such resolu- 
tion, such deference with such independence. He was 
a great moral hero, afraid of nothing but doing wrong. 
He rejoiced to comfort the miserable captive, and yet 
would never yield to the undue claims of the great. 
He refused to kneel to any power but God, and Em- 
peror and Pope were wiUing to dispense with their 
common etiquette, and admit the plain spoken Eng- 
lishman to their presence. He was not afraid of bat- 
tle, and once with his own hand pointed a gun against 
a Barbary pirate that gave chase to the ship in which 
he had taken passage, on his visit to the lazarettos of 
the East. But to face the plague was more than to 
face the pirate, and the heroism of humanity far tran- 
scends that of warfare. 

Visit St. Paul's cathedral, London. Two statues 
stand conspicuous there — one connected with emblems 
of peace — the other with emblems of war. One com- 
memorates the man who gave his life for humanity in 
works of healing mercy — the other the man who de- 
voted himself to his country in deeds of destruction. 
Neither of them was a stranger to prayer. One pray- 
ed for England's glory — the other for mankind's wel- 
fare. The one with a presentiment of death in 
his heart went to die at Trafalgar in the midst of 
bloody victory, the other with the like presentiment 
went forth to breathe his last among strangers whom 
he had blessed, defying no foe save that plague which 
was the foe of his race. There they stand, the Jewish 
Nelson and the Christian Howard. When will man- 
kind rightly judge between the two, when justly 



HIS MOTIVES. 391 

honor beyond the martial courage that conquered on 
the Nile and at Trafalgar, the moral heroism that en- 
abled a man unarmed to walk calmly among two 
hundred prisoners in the madness of rebellion and 
soothe them to peace ; that moved him to exchange a 
pleasant home for the cells of lazarettos and to brave 
the plague under the worst of its terrible forms? 
When will the spirit of Christianity hold a place even 
in Christendom above the spirit of Judaism 7 

This grave question is one in which we are closely 
concerned — we who in our national relations have 
lavished millions upon an unjustifiable war with a 
people entitled rather to our pity — we who are so apt 
to stand passively by and allow the plainest princi- 
ples of Christianity to be trampled upon. It is not 
the time now to carry out the contrast between the 
Christian and the Jewish spirit and policy in interna- 
tional affairs, inviting as the topic is. Nor can we 
expatiate upon the various collateral subjects connect- 
ed with Howard's great mission. Every philanthropic 
movement fitly belongs to the consideration of him 
who visited the sick and the poor, as well as the cap- 
tive, and consecrated himself to the cause of the suf- 
fering. But one leading idea marked his career for 
all time. Under God and Christ, he has been the 
great reformer in the treatment of criminals — the 
teacher and exemplar of the Christian law binding 
upon society in reference to the transgressors who 
have been looked upon as utter outcasts and enemies. 

How shall the criminal be treated, is the question 
that he agitated with such power in his life and which 
has been agitated still more widely in our own day^ 



392 JOHN HOWARD. 

His own doctrine was distinct. The aim of punish- 
ment in his view was the reformation of the offender 
as well as the protection of society. As to the punish- 
ment of death, he opposed it except for wilful murder 
and such incendiarism and burglary as endangered 
life. He would have the criminal treated as a human 
being still, in spite of his degradation. He would 
guard his health with all the aids of pure air, diet and 
clothing, and his morals by due solicitude and instruc- 
tion. I need not say that he would scrupulously dis- 
tinguish between the various kinds of crime, and 
urged the superiority of prevention over remedy as he 
dwelt upon the evils of .intemperance, ignorance and 
irreligion. 

As we sum up the result of Howard's life, our duty 
is first of all to appreciate and accept the great prin- 
ciple to which he consecrated it. He was not merely a 
man of feeling, much less a weak sentimentalist, but 
a practical and intelligent reformer. In his labors for 
the prisoner, he acted upon a fundamental idea — the 
idea that punishment should not be vindictive, but 
reformatory and protective. His social code was but 
his religious faith applied to social morals. For to 
him God was the Heavenly Father, and society is 
bound to model its policy in accordance with the pa- 
rental government of Heaven. He reminded those 
persons who discouraged his merciful efforts on the 
ground of the danger of lessening the terror of pun- 
ishment, that we are to '' imitate our gracious Heav- 
enly Parent, who is kind to the unthankful and the 
evil ;" and to commiserate those who fall, for " Let 
him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." 



HIS VIEWS. 393 

This principle of substituting for vindictive codes a 
parental system of corrective and protective punish- 
ment, has wrought great changes in society and is 
destined to work still greater. It has abolished the 
rack, the faggot, the wheel, the torture chamber, and 
has shaken the foundation of the whipping-post and 
the gibbet. The measures that have been taken to 
reform the criminal by due separation, labor and in- 
struction, instead of encouraging crime by leniency, 
have tended more effectually to protect society and its 
essential laws. The old vindictive system cherished 
in society at large the very principle upon which crime 
is nourished, and the prison itself was a great school 
of sensuality and revenge. Mercy and justice have 
been found to be friendty, not antagonist powers. 
Let the claims of both these heavenly agencies be 
considered duly, and the rights of society can be duly 
protected without in the least infringing upon the claim 
of humanity. Let punishment be sure to follow 
transgression, and its power will be far greater than if 
it fail of sureness by sanguinary severity. We have 
as little respect as Howard for the doctrine that would 
sacrifice justice to pity and deem guilt but misfortune. 
Like him, or like the Master whom he followed, we 
would blend justice with mercy. If it be said that a 
man's view of society is generally modelled upon his 
view of religion, and that the liberal school of Chris- 
tians tends too much to lessen the afflictive character 
of legal penalties, we are not disposed to deem the ac- 
cusation as severe as its opposite. If more merciful 
views of theology have abolished the torture and the 
faggot — the damp dungeon and the bloody inquisition, 



394 JOHN HOWARD. 

what was the theolog}^ from which these things 
sprang? Were the men of a darker age consistent or 
inconsistent when, copying what they deemed the 
method of God, they tore men in pieces with red-hot 
pincers or broke them limb by hmb upon the wheel ? 
The error of mercy is the more pardonable error in frail 
man. We would not however follow the impulse of 
mercy at the expense of justice, but rather seek for 
that method which thinks of the protection of the in- 
nocent as well as the reformation of the guilty, and 
brings down to earth the just and tender law of the 
Heavenly Father and the Eternal King. 

This was Howard's great principle of prison discip- 
line — ^a mode of punishment, not vindictive, but pro- 
tective and reformatory. The nations have signally 
answered to his appeal, and his principle has been at 
least nominally accepted by the leading people of 
Christendom. It has been accepted, and its results 
have been embodied in a whole department of litera- 
ture and in many magnificent monuments of archi- 
tecture. A large library might be formed by works 
written upon the subject, and more time and money 
have been expended in many nations within the last 
century upon the erection of suitable prisons than 
upon palaces. New England has not been behind 
hand in this good enterprise. 

Leaving now the sacred name that has been our 
theme, we are sadly obdurate, if we are not touched 
anew with a sense of our own duty. Are we the 
friends of humanity — do we strive to comfort the 
afflicted, to visit the sick, to cheer the down-hearted, 
or do we live barely for ourselves? What is our 



CONCLUSION. 395 

course in regard to the evils that so curse mankind ? 
Do we oppose them in their root as well as their 
branches — their causes as well as their consequences 7 
Have we pity for the prisoner and an enmity to the 
vices that make him so ? When we hear of villany in 
its petty larcenies or its great crimes, are we as much 
inchned to set our faces against the temptation as to 
denounce the offence ? We may not rival Howard 
in energy or name. We follow his example worthily 
when looking to God through Christ we stand up in 
word and deed for the truths and virtues which bring 
down to the earth the light and love of heaven. 

" I was in prison and ye came unto me ; I was 
sick and ye visited me." Humanity is sick — ay, in 
prison all around us, hungry, thirsty, naked. It is 
the representative body of Christ that thus suffers, 
and all that we can do in blessing is done as to him. 
To us as to the soul of John Howard the identity 
of faith and love may appear, and Christ is ready to 
manifest himself in the persons of the afflicted. Christ 
has ever been near when mercy has remembered the 
stranger and the captive, 

1849. 



S' . 



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